Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [168]
The garage appeared out of the murk; he had run right to it, and was feeling mighty pleased with himself until he came to the lock door and pushed the open button and nothing happened. It was easy to lock a lock’s outer door, just leave the inner one open. His lungs burned, he needed a breath. He ran around the garage to the walktube that connected it to the habitat proper, reached it, stared in through the layers of plastic. No one in sight. He took his hand away from the rip on his shoulder and as quickly as he could opened the box on his left forearm and took out the little drill, turned it on and plunged it into the plastic, which gave without breaking and gathered up around the spinning bit, until the drill almost broke his elbow. He poked wildly with it and finally got the plastic to tear, then ripped downward, widening the hole until he could dive through it helmet first. When he was inside to the waist he held still, using his body as a rough plug for the hole. He unclipped his helmet and ripped it off his head and gasped for breath as if coming up from a long dive, out in out in out in. Get that CO2 out of the blood. His shoulders and neck were numb. Down at the garage an alarm bell was ringing.
After a twenty-second compressed burst of thought, he yanked his legs through the hole and ran down the quickly depressurizing tube toward the habitat, away from the garage. Happily the door there opened on command. Once inside he jumped in an elevator and dropped to the third floor below the ground, where he was staying in one of the guest suites. He let the elevator door open and looked out. No one in sight. He hustled down to his room. Inside he stripped off the walker and stashed it and the helmet in his closet. In the bathroom he winced at the sight of his whitened shoulders and upper back; a really horrible case of frostnip. He took some oral painkiller and a triple dose of omegendorph, put on a shirt with a collar, pants, shoes. He combed his hair, composed himself. The face in the mirror looked glassy-eyed and distracted, almost stunned. He threw his face through the most violent contortions, slapped it, resettled his expression, started breathing in a deep pattern. The drugs began to kick in, and his reflection looked a little better.
He went out into the hall and walked to the big trench-wall concourse, which extended downward three more stories. He walked along the railing looking at the people below, feeling a curious mixture of elation and rage. Then Sam Houston and one of his women colleagues approached him.
“Excuse me, Mr. Boone, but will you please come with us?”
“What’s up?” he said.
“There’s been another incident. Someone cut open one of the walkway tubes.”
“Cut open a walktube? You call that an incident? We have mirror satellites flying out of orbit, and trucks falling into moholes, and you’re calling a prank like that an incident?”
Houston glared at him, and Boone almost laughed at the man. “How do you think I can help?” he asked.
“We know you’ve been working on this for Dr. Russell. We thought you might like to be informed.”
“Oh, I see. Well, let’s go have a look then.”
And then it was a matter of going through the paces, for nearly two hours, his shoulders burning like fire the whole time. Houston and Chang and the other investigators spoke to him as if in confidence, and anxious for his input, but their gazes were coolly evaluative. John returned them with