Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [89]
Within three minutes of switching on power, Gregg ruptured a sewer sluice and a main water pipe. The water jetted out and knocked a crawling man flat, playing wildly over him, drowning him, streaming and cascading over everything, seething between the metal sandwich of decks.
‘Switch that thing off, you crazy loon!’ one of the Forwards men, sensing danger, yelled at Gregg.
For answer, Gregg turned the heat on him.
A power cable went next. Sizzling, rearing like a cobra, live wire flashed across the rails the inspection trucks ran on; two men died without a chirp.
The gravity blew. Over that entire deck, free fall suddenly snapped into being. Nothing so quickly produces panic as the sensation of falling. The stampede which followed in that constricted area only made matters worse. Gregg himself, though he had had experience of zero gravity, lost his head and dropped the gun. It rebounded gently up at him. Screaming, his beard flaming, he punched away the blazing muzzle with his fist . . .
During this pandemonium, Complain and Vyann stood by Master Scoyt, who had just been brought up on a stretcher to his own room. Having had a taste of the gas himself, Complain could sympathize with the still unconscious Master.
He could smell the gas lingering in Scoyt’s hair: he could also smell burning. A glance upwards showed him a tendril of smoke probing through the overhead grilles.
‘That fire the fools started two decks down – the air duct system is going to carry the smoke everywhere!’ he exclaimed to Vyann. ‘It ought to be stopped.’
‘If we could only close the inter-deck doors . . .’ she said. ‘Ought we to get Roger out of here?’
Even as she spoke, Scoyt stirred and groaned. Plunging water over his face, massaging his arms, they were too busy to notice the shouts in the corridor; there had been so much shouting that a little more went unremarked until, the door suddenly crashing open, Councillor Tregonnin entered.
‘Mutiny!’ he said. ‘Mutiny! I feared as much. Oh hem, what will happen to us all? I said from the start that that Deadways gang should never be allowed in here. Can’t you rouse Scoyt? He’d know what to do! I’m not supposed to be a man of action.’
Complain fixed him with a surly eye. The little librarian was almost dancing on his toes, his face gawky with excitement.
‘What seems to be the trouble?’ he asked.
With a visible effort, Tregonnin pulled himself up before that contemptuous stare.
‘The ship is being wrecked,’ he said, more steadily. ‘That madman Hawl – the fellow with the little head – has the heat gun. Your brother was injured. Now most of his gang – and many of our men – are simply pulling everywhere to bits. I ordered them to stop and surrender the gun, but they just laughed at me.’
‘They’ll obey Scoyt,’ Complain said grimly. He began shaking Scoyt insistently.
‘I’m afraid, Roy. I can’t help feeling something terrible is going to happen,’ Vyann said.
One glance at her face told Complain how worried she was. He stood up beside her, stroking her upper arm.
‘Keep working on Master Scoyt, Councillor,’ he told Tregonnin. ‘He’ll soon be lively enough to solve all your problems for you. We’ll be back.’
He hustled a surprised Vyann out into the corridor. A thin dribble of water crept along the deck, dripping into the manholes.
‘Now what?’ she asked him.
‘I was a fool not to think of this before,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to risk pulling the place down about our heads to get to the Giants – unless there is another way. And there is another way. Zac Deight has an instrument in his room by which he spoke to Curtis, the Giants’ leader.’
‘Don’t you remember, Roy, Marapper said Zac Deight had gone?’ she said.
‘We may be able to find the way to work the instrument without him,’ Complain replied. ‘Or we may find something else there that will be useful to us. We are doing no good here, that’s sure.’
He spoke ironically, as six Forwards men, pelting silently along, brushed past him. Everyone seemed to be on the run, splashing down the corridors; no