Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [137]
“Good.”
He opened the channel again. “Patrol, this is Hammersmith. Has the subspace transmission ceased?”
“Negative.” The voice paused. “Hammersmith, what is your situation?”
“I think we ought to tell them,” said Kim.
“That would not be a good idea. If they believed us, we might just get a missile up our tailpipe.”
“I don’t believe they’d do that.”
“Don’t be too sure. This situation has suddenly become very scary.”
Suddenly. “Solly. It’s always been scary.” She couldn’t keep the note of recrimination out of her voice.
He tried to apologize, but she brushed it away. No matter. It’s okay.
It wasn’t, of course. But deep down she felt a sense of gratification that she’d been shown to be right.
He talked to the Patrol again, detailing the mechanical problems. “This is becoming a nightmare,” he told her. Then he shut down the engines.
“You said something about taking a wrench to it,” she said.
“That’s what we have to do. But it’s on the lower level, back in the woodwork. It’ll take a half hour or more. That’s too much time.”
“So what do we do?”
“Give me a moment.” He handed her a wristlamp, told her to turn it on, and opened a closet. He vanished inside and she heard him moving things around, heard the sound of a panel sliding back, and then the room went dark. But it wasn’t like the normal darkness in the pilot’s room, where one could sit in the glow of the instrument panels. Everything died: screens, gauges, status lamps, telltales, the electronic burble of the equipment. The place had gone completely black and silent. She tried to change her position and felt herself rising out of the seat. The artificial gravity was off.
A few security lights, operating on a separate circuit, began to glow. A battery lantern snapped on behind her. “That’ll stop it,” he said.
“I hate to bring this up.” She was afloat now. “Do we still have life support?”
“No. Everything’s shut down, except the engines. They’re on a bypass. But we’ll be okay long enough to disable the transmitter.”
They switched to grip shoes and went down to the bottom floor, where long windows looked into the cargo and storage bays. The lamps threw shadows behind stocks of food, esoteric equipment that would have been used in the Taratuba mission, the recycling units, and the gravity control system. Solly opened a cabinet and picked out some tools. Satisfied, he led her toward the front of the ship.
Twin water tanks were housed forward in bays on either side of the passageway. They entered the starboard side and knelt down beside the tank. Solly anchored the lantern, which had a magnetic base, and began removing a panel.
Kim watched him work, got up, and went back into the corridor. She could see the stairway at the rear, outlined by security lights. In the launch bay, in the glow of her wrist-lamp, the lander’s cockpit looked like a fish’s head, rising through the floor. Its circular viewports stared back at her.
Solly laid the panel alongside the tank and looked inside the wall at a crawl space. “It’ll take a while,” he said, ducking into it. “I have to remove some other stuff to get at the transmitter.” He took the lantern and was gone.
The darkness pressed down on her.
She could hear the clink of Solly’s tools and the occasional scrape of metal on metal. Now and then something banged. The noise lifted her spirits. She stayed close by.
After a few minutes she heard a grunt of satisfaction. “That’ll do for the son of a bitch,” he said.
At that moment, a circle of illumination snapped on at the top of the staircase and her weight came back with the force of a blow between the shoulder blades. Although both shoes had been in contact with the deck, it was nonetheless like stepping into an unexpected hole in an unlit room. She twisted her knee and yelped. “Solly,” she cried, “warn me next time.” Her voice echoed off the walls.
“Wasn’t me,” he yelled.
Lights were coming on everywhere, in the passageway, the individual bays, even in the crawl space.
“Power’s back on!” she said.
“I can see that. This goddamn thing could have juiced me.”