Tripoint

Saby didn't wait for amenities, opened the door and headed out, zipping what she'd loosed for comfort.

Crew and dockers in dress and undress thumped into the corridors at a wobbly, staggering run, generally in their direction, down lower main, knocking into walls, some of them, but going as fast as they could.

It was an eerie feeling, everybody ru

The gang-up at the end of the corridor split in two directions, down the transverses, the mirror-image D blocks, where the suit lockers were—locker doors already powered open, from the bridge, suits open, helmets and harnesses suspended on their racks, a surreal gathering of human shells, crew already backing into them, sealing them in that drill a spacer could do drunk or asleep.

"Michaels!" Saby said, and shoved him at Michael's locker.

He turned, stepped into the suit backward, got his arms into the sleeves, sealed the front, kicked the release plate to bring the LS backpack and helmet down over his head and shoulders.

Seals clicked. Indicators and faceplate display flared on, confirming lifesupport and seals positive.

Came, instantly, that claustrophobic shortness of breath the suit gave him. It always got to him this way: he'd helped Marie in cargo, yeah, mostly from the ops boards safely upside—he never suited except in drills.

The borrowed rig smelled of disinfectant, of Michaels' use. The air he depended on came to him rationed by a regulator. The mass of the harness as it came free of the rack was an instant revision of body-space and center of gravity.

Another suited figure leaned into vision, adjusted something on his chest-link. SABRINA PERRAULT, the paint on the helmet said. With a decal rose. She bumped helmets.

"You all right? Com not working?"

"Yeah. It's working."

Stupid. He'd not turned his communications on. He'd sworn to her he knew what he was doing, and she knew…

"Cha

She moved and he followed, at the shuffling, big-footed walk which ring rotation imposed on them, a lock-step sweating haste, back along the D-curve, toward the cargo lift as it opened.

They got in at the rear, jammed in as closely and as tightly as they could, fourteen, maybe fifteen suited bulks, before the doors shut and the lift jolted out of synch with the passenger ring.

Immediately after, one fractional pass of the ring about the core, the car banged into lock with the zero-g frame.

Automatic doors let them out on a dark hold. The cold of space froze their attending puff of humidified air into ice crystals in the spotty glare of the helmet lights. Hold lights flared on around them, illuminating loading machinery, racks, and tiers of cans that jammed their hold right up to the red line. A group of white-suited figures was going forward, down the still-empty cargo chute—he saw officers' sleeve patches on that lot. All around him, bodies moved, white, bulky, anonymous except for sleeve patches, non-com crew fa

Saby grabbed his arm briefly, hit his chest with her hand and got his suit light on, illumination for the shadowed areas.

He wasn't tracking a hundred percent. The suit read-out wasn't in the familiar order in the chin-level display—he hadn't realized his light wasn't defaulted on; and crew knocked into them in their delay, making a gap in the line, hindering an already dangerous effort. A jump-queasy stomach and the begi

An enemy in the system?

Colors flashed, in memory. Sound wailed at them.

Got to have that card in the slot and that message input, Tommy. If Patrick comes at us, and he will, got to have that message input. Then that old hulk's our friend.

Sweat ran, a trickle down his face he couldn't wipe. He moved where Saby and the rest moved. Words echoed out of the dark in his skull, red and blue flashes smeared and ran while he hauled himself along on the hand-rail.

God, release the line brakes… The 4-meter ca

" Look out!" came over his helmet-com. Somebody bumped him, passing down the line in a hell of a hurry. Didn't know who it was. He moved, out of breath, hand over hand down the rail that led along the can-track, trying to hit the rhythm Saby did, ahead of him—he was trying not to hold up the line behind them, because there was nobody in front, and he couldn't get his breath… colors washed across his vision. Remembrance of smell-taste-hearing, bone-deep sound, all but pain…

They were well past the hold lights, now. The can-track was a continuous-loop railing in the dim overhead, the exit-chute wall was narrowing around them, and light came as a scatter of patches where their suit lights picked out solid objects, a back-pack, a hand, a section of safety rail as they hand-over-handed into the absolute night of the chute.

Then the cargo check console materialized in Saby's chest-light, nobody ma

" Run 'em out. "That was Austin's voice over the com, on the general cha

Up here. Austin was forward, then, in the mate-up zone… that wasn't where the captain belonged, damn him…

" We got precious little time, "Austin was saying. " Skit's coming our way, but the sumbitch can't fire til he passes. "

" Cans are going to be all over that hold, "somebody said. " Damn free-fall billiards. "

"Yeah, yeah, best we can do, Deke, sorry, neat isn't in our capacity right now, we'll be real satisfied with out of here. "

"We got high-mass stuff in this load!"

" Deke, just watch the damn line— she's rolling!"

Cans had started to move. Tom caught a look at Saby, lights from the console a multicolored constellation on Saby's mask

… busy and on a hair-trigger. Saby flipped other switches, engaging can-pickup robotics that moved the cans on their tracks way back in the tiers… he understood the board—he knew what process had just started; the carriages were picking up cans back there, sliding into the motorized track. The inspection brake at this console only slowed a can enough for the laser-reader to find the can customs-tags, and a deft hand to snatch off any remaining monitor plug… but then the tractor-chain caught the carriage and ran the can up to whatever rate of delivery the end-line brake was supposed to control.

If it wasn't latched down. Which left Saby's brake as the only regulator on a line not even designed for free-fall—God knew what motion the cans were going to pick up as they hit the chain…