Footfall

“Losing steam pressure.”

“She’s getting sluggish. Doesn’t want to maneuver.”

“Something’s wrong portside forward.”

“Harry!”

“Yeah, Max, I’m on the way. “Jeff, let’s do it.” Progress was slow. As they moved forward, the ship was hotter, and there was more damage. Handholds were missing. New holes punched through.

Some punch. Michael’s armor was in layers: steel armor, fiberglass matting, more steel armor, layer after layer of hard and nonresilient soft. Anything coming through that had been moving fast — and hadn’t melted.

Harry felt a tug. He looked behind. His air lines were stretched taut. “End of the line.”

“Max, we can’t get further,” Jeff Franklin reported.

“You have to. We’re losing pressure just forward of you.”

“Losing pressure.”

“Yeah, the most powerful spacecraft ever built by man is going to fail for lack of steam.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “I’ll go have a look.” He disco

Big Mama was close, close. The drive flame, the dark cylinder at its tip — the sudden green flare, the firefly lights of missiles pouring from four points along her flank. “Firing,” said Roy.

“I’ll wait.”

“Good. Missiles one through five away. Getting target acquisition for the next group. We’ve actually got a few minutes don’t we?”

“Say two minutes before the missiles get here …”

“Missiles six through ten, away.” The green light had dimmed. Big Mama’s lasers had found more interesting targets: Atlantis’s own missiles.

“-But we’re heating up. Oh, fuck it. We won’t be taking it long. How you doing?”

“Target acquired, missiles eleven through fifteen away; that’s all of them. Turn us! Now!”

Motors popped on. Atlantis turned, belly toward Big Mama. Roy opened the petcocks again. A cloud of water vapor might slow a missile or confuse its poor brain. Something slammed them against their seats. Again. “Reentry is going to be a problem,” Jay said, and laughed. “It isn’t atmosphere you’re—”

The Shuttle twisted: an explosion against one wing. Jay brought them back with attitude jets.

“-thinking of entering. I wish I had a view.”

Nothing showed beyond the window save stars and a hail of green. The reentry shield was boiling under Big Mama’s lasers. “Are we still on target? I’d hate to miss after all this.”

“Big Mama’s a big target,” Jay said. There didn’t seem to be a hell of a lot more to say.

The portside bow was chaos. Steam poured from broken pipe and streamed through the ripped hull.

“Shut the damn steam off!” Harry shouted.

“Maneuvering. Stand by. Harry, if we cut the steam on port side, I won’t be able to maneuver.”

“Incoming. Stand by.”

Michael shuddered again.

Max Rohrs was holding his calm, but it sounded like he was fighting to do it. “Steam pressure falling. We’ll try to shunt to secondary water sources.”

What good will that do if we can’t get the leak shut off. Harry studied the situation. The compartment ahead was filled with steam and wreckage. He could feel its heat radiating through his faceplate. If I move real fast, I can just — “Jeff, I’m going forward and close that valve. Nine-alfa for the record.”

Rohrs overrode Franklin’s answer. “Don’t, unless you can open nine-bravo. We need that steam path.”

Oh, holy shit! “Roger. Here I go.”

He dove forward. The handholds were hot through his gloves. The ship maneuvered, so that he wasn’t quite in free-fall, but there wasn’t real gravity either. Ragged metal ends reached out to scrape against the hard upper torso of his suit.

He reached the valve wheel. “Max?”

Nothing. “I don’t think he can hear you,” Jeff Franklin said. “Harry, do you need help?”

“Not enough room in here for two. Tell Max I’m opening nine-bravo now.”

The big valve wheel didn’t want to turn. There was nothing to brace his feet against, and the valve wouldn’t respond to onehanded operation. Got to move slow. Careful. Think it through. He placed his feet as carefully as an Alpiner on a granite wall. Finally he had both braced, his left foot wedged into a wide crack in one bulkhead.

“Turn, you mother! Got it! Now to close nine-alfa.”

He didn’t dare look at the temperature gauge on his wrist. The valve wheel was all the way forward. Beyond it was a smooth-edged hole four feet around. Stars shone through that.

Between him and the valve was a jet of steam.

“Jeff, make them stop acceleration for a moment. I have to jump.”

“Okay. Command, this is Franklin. Reddington needs things stable for a minute.”

Static in Harry’s intercom. Then Franklin. “You can have two minutes, exactly four minutes from now.”

“Roger.” If I can live four more minutes. He could hear each heartbeat as a base drum in his head. Slow down. Calm. Relax … Relaxation made the pounding sound worse.

There were flashes out there, outside. Shadows flickered through the hole in the hull.

Jeri. Melissa. They never found the bodies. Hell, here I come!

“Stand by, Harry. Ten seconds. Okay … now.”

Harry leaped across the gap. Steam played over him.

It was cooler on the other side. The black outside seemed to suck heat away. “Got the valve. Turning it. It’s turning — shit! Have to brace my feet.”

“Harry, can they maneuver now?”

He sensed urgency in Franklin’s voice. “All right.”

“I’ll relay warnings. Acceleration. Stand by.”

WHAM

Left foot here. Right foot. Okay. Grip. Turn. Turn. His left foot slipped. Sharp pain ran up his shin. A small plume of steam came out at the ankle. Steam? That hot in my suit? He tried to brace his foot again. The universe shrank to a sticking valve wheel. Behind him the steam plume was tiny, nearly as small as the plume from his suit.

“You got it, Harry, get the hell out of there!”

“Coming.” Turn, you bastard. Turn. His foot hurt like hell. Forward was the black of space, cool. If I wedge in that hole I can get leverage. He moved forward. One quick look outside.

The Mother Ship was far ahead, still too far for details; but the drive flame was a spear, not a dot. She had turned sideways. Trying to dodge. To dodge one of the Shuttles. Harry could see the familiar triangular silhouette limned against the flame, easing forward, past the flame…

Flame burst from near the center of the cylinder. They rammed, Harry thought, and they did it right. Big Mama’s drive flame veered, and suddenly there was a brighter streak in the violet-white. Yellow and orange, and the wavering flame was veering back into line, but down the violet-white spear ran a stream of bonfire-colored flame.

“Jeff—”

“Yeah? Harry, get out of there!”

“In a minute. Jeff, tell the boss. Shuttle Four. Atlantis. They rammed. They hurt that mother, they hurt her. I can see it did something to the drive. They hurt her—”

“Harry, are you all right? Get out of there!”

“Yeah, they rammed! They damaged her! They damaged the drive! Now we’ll catch her. Something inside the drive is boiling away, you can see it in the flame. And the impact point, it’s a pit, and I bet I can see — four layers deep. Big Mama must be built like a Heinlein Universe ship, for spin, you know? Layers wrapped around a free-fall axis. We hurt her.”

“Yeah—”

“Tell Gillespie, damn it!”

“You tell him! Come on, Harry!”

Harry shined his light down. The small jet from his left ankle was pink. The gauges showed that he had five minutes of air. It was cool out here, most of him outside the hull. His legs were inside. It was hot in there. Go back in there?

Five minutes. It takes three or four to get through there. And it’s hot …

“Maneuvering. Acceleration. Stand by.”

WHAM

In there? With acceleration?

“Incoming. Harry, move!”

“Can’t move, Jeff. Anyway, I’m leaking.”