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Our lock was open. Modred had opened us up. The realization got through to Dela and she flew across the deck to Griffin and Lance and the rest of them. “Close it—for God’s sake, close it,” Dela cried, and I just stood there with my hands to my mouth because it was clear it was not happening.
“It’s not working,” Ly
“Override,” Griffin said.
“There might be some onein the way—”
“Override.”
Ly
“They’ve got it braced wide open,” Gawain said. “Percy—get cameras down there—”
Percy swung about, and reached the keyboard. All of a sudden we had picture and sound, this hideous babble, this conglomeration of serpent bodies in clear focus—serpents and other things as unlovely, a heaving mass within the Maid’s airlock. The second door still held firm, and there was our barrier beyond—there was still that.
“We’ve got to get down there,” Griffin said.
“They can’t get through so quickly,” Dela said. Her teeth were chattering.
“They don’t have to be delicate now they’ve got that outer lock braced open.” Griffin was distraught, his hands on Dela’s shoulders. He looked around at all of us. “Suit up. Now. We don’t know what they may do. Dela, get to the dining hall and just stay there. And get him out of here—” The latter for Modred, who lay unmoving. “Get him out, locked up, out of our way.”
Lance bent down and dragged Modred up. I started to help, took Modred’s arm, which was totally limp, as if that great blow had broken him—as if all the fire and drive had just burned him out and Lance’s blow had shattered him. For that moment I pitied him, for he never meant to betray us, but he was Modred, made that way and named for it. “Let me,” Percivale said, who was much stronger, and who would treat him gently. So I surrendered him to Percivale, to take away, to lock up where he could do us no more harm.
“He’d fight for us,” I said to Griffin, thinking that we could hardly spare Modred’s wit and his strength, whatever there was left to do now.
“We can’t rely on that,” Griffin said. He laid his hand on my shoulder, with Dela right there in his other arm. “Elaine—all of you. We do what we pla
“Yes, sir,” I said, and Gawain the same. A silence from Vivien.
“Come on,” Griffin said.
So we went, and now over com we could hear the sound of what had gotten into the ship. I imagined them calling for cutters in their hisses and their squeals, and scaly dragon bodies pressing forward—oh, it could happen quickly now, and my skin drew as if there had been a cold wind blowing.
No sound of trumpets. No brave charge. We had armor, but it was all too fragile, and swords, but they had lasers, all too likely; and all the history of this place was theirs, not ours.
XV
A land of old upheaven from the abyss
By fire, to sink into the abyss again;
Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt,
And the long mountains ended in a coast
Of ever-shifting sand, and far away
The phantom circle of a moaning sea.
... And there, that day when the great light of heaven
Burned at his lowest in the rolling year,
On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed.
Nor yet had Arthur fought a fight
Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west.
A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea:
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold
With formless fear; and ev’n on Arthur fell
Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought.
For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew.
We had put the suits all in the dining room, all piled in the corner like so many bodies; and the breathing units were by them in a stack; and the helmets by those.... “Shouldn’t we,” I said, taking my lady’s suit from Percy, who was distributing pieces. I turned to my lady. “—shouldn’t we take Modred’s to him—in case?”
“No,” Griffin said behind me, and firmly. “He’ll be safe enough only so he stays put.”
I doubted that. I doubted it for all of us, and it seemed cruel to me. But I helped my lady with her suit, which she had never put on before, and which I had never tried. Lance was helping Griffin with his; but Ly
Griffin was first done, knowing himself something about suits and getting into them. He had his helmet in his hand and waved off assistance from Gawain. “Dela,” he said then, “you stay here. You can’t help down there, you hear me?”
“I hear you,” she said, “but I’m coming down there anyway.”
“Dela—”
“I’ll stay back,” she said, “but I’ll be behind you.”
Griffin looked distraught. He wanted to say no again, that was sure; but he turned then and took one of the swords in hand, his helmet tucked under his arm. “There’ll be no using the beam cutters or the explosives,” he said. “If that’s methane out there. Modred did us that much service. So the swords and spears are all we’ve got. Dela—” Maybe he had something more to say and changed his mind. He lost it, whatever it had been, and walked off and out the door while we worked frantically at my lady’s fastenings.
“Hurry,” Dela insisted, and Lynette got the last clip fastened.
“Done,” Ly
“Vivien,” my lady said sharply, and fixed Viv with her eye, because Viv was standing against the wall with never a move to do anything. “You want to wait here until they come slithering up the halls, Vivien?”
“No, lady,” Vivien said, and went and took the suit that Percy offered her.
“Help me,” Viv said to us. She meant it as an order. But my lady was already headed out the door, and Lance and I were in no frame of mind to wait on Vivien.
“Get us ready,” I said to Ly
But Percivale delayed his own suiting to attend to Vivien, who was all but shivering with fright. I heard the lift work a second time and knew my lady had gone without us ... and still we had that sound everywhere. Ly