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Van Atta beat Yei, whose eye was still caught by the map, out the door to her office and through the airseal doors at the end of the module that should have been sealed and weren't. The doors seemed to sag half-opened, controls dead, useless, as Van Atta and Yei joined a babbling stream of staffers speeding toward safety. Van Atta swallowed, cursing his sinuses, as one ear popped and the other, throbbing, failed to. Adrenaline-spurred anxiety shivered in his stomach.

Lecture Module C was already mobbed when they arrived, with downsiders in every state of dress and undress. One of the Nutrition staff had a case of frozen food clutched under her arm—Van Atta rejected the notion that she had inside information about the duration of the emergency and decided she must have simply had it in her hands when the alarm sounded and not thought to drop it before she fled.

"Close the door!" howled a chorus of voices as his and Yei's group entered. A distinct breeze sighed past them, rising to a whistle cut to silence as the doors sealed.

Chaos and babble ruled in the crowded lecture module.

"What's going on?"

"Ask Wyzak."

"He's out there, surely, dealing with it."

"If not, he'd better get the hell out there—"

"Is everybody here?"

"Where are the quaddies? What about the quaddies?"

"They have their own safe area, this isn't big enough."

"Their gym, probably."

"I didn't catch any directions for them on the holovid, to the gym or anywhere else—"

"Try the com."

"Half the channels are dead."

"Can't you even raise Central Systems?"

"Lady, I am Central Systems—"

"Shouldn't we have a head-count? Does anybody know exactly how many there are up on rotation right now?"

"Two hundred seventy-two, but how can you know which are missing because they're trapped and which are missing because they're out there dealing with it—"

"Let me at that damned com unit—"

"CLOSE THE DOOR!" Van Atta himself joined the chorus this time, semi-involuntarily. The pressure differential was becoming more marked. He was glad he wasn't a latecomer. If this went on it would shortly become his duty to see the doors stayed closed at any cost, no matter who was pounding for admittance from the other side. He had a little list . . . Well, anybody who lacked the wit to respond quickly to emergency instructions shouldn't be on a space station. Survival of the fittest.

If they hadn't amassed the whole two hundred seventy-two by now, they were surely getting close. Van Atta pushed his way through the bobbing crowd toward the center of the module, stealing momentum from this or that person at the price of their own displacement. A few turned to object, saw who had nudged them, and bit short their complaints. Somebody had the cover off the com unit and was peering into its guts in frustration, lacking delicate diagnostic tools doubtless dropped somewhere back in the Habitat.

"Can't you at least raise the quaddies' gym?" demanded a young woman. "I've got to know if my class made it there."

"Well, why didn't you go with 'em, then?" the would-be repairman snapped logically.

"One of the older quaddies took them. He told me to come here. I didn't think to argue with him, with that alarm howling in our ears—"

"No go." Grimacing, the man clicked the cover shut.

"Well, I'm going back and find out," said the young woman decisively.

"No, you're not," interrupted Van Atta. "There's too many people breathing in here to open the door and lose air unnecessarily. Not till we find out what's going on, how extensive this is, and how long it's likely to last."

The man tapped the holovid cover. "If this thing doesn't cut in, the only way we're going to find out anything is to send out somebody with a breath mask to go check."

"We'll give it a few more minutes." Damn that overweening fool Graf. What had he done? And where was he? In a breath mask somewhere, Van Atta trusted, or better yet a pressure suit—although if Graf had indeed caused this unholy mess, Van Atta wasn't sure he wished