Andre Norton - Redline the Stars

It seemed to be about over now, he judged. They appeared to have discovered all the survivors at this site. At least, all that had come out in the last several trips were bodies and parts of bodies.

His eyes shut with infinite weariness. Had Japan suffered like this, he wondered, before volcano and giant wave had combined to throw her islands, population, and ancient culture beneath the cloaking surface of Terra's ocean? It had taken two days and the night between them. Had desperate rescue teams struggled on even as they were doing here in the face of ever-mounting calamity throughout all that first day and night and maybe part of the second day until an implacably furious nature had left none alive to save or be saved?

The Steward shook his head and looked with concern at the party just pulling itself out of the ruin. That was not his own history. It was not the history of his parents or grandparents. For Ali Kamil, this was his boyhood returned.

Apart from the fact that the cause had been cruel accident rather than human savagery, he had seen all this, lived it, and he had survived. Would he be able to do so a second time?

Frank watched the Engineer-apprentice haul himself erect and claim the luxury of stretching cramped, exhausted muscles. His face was blank, a mask, but his dark eyes were alive and afire, blazing like a pair of young stars pulled out of the depths of space.

Kamil had been tireless in his efforts. More than that.

They all had worked and were working, but Ali had proven to be worth any three of the rest of them. He seemed to have no fear of the treacherous rubble and ventured time and again into it without hesitation or apparent qualm, and once inside, he rarely failed to accomplish his mission. He had an almost uncanny feel for it, for locating hidden, otherwise lost survivors, for figuring with a minimum of lost time how best to shove or pry or lift away the material confining them. When this day was over, it would be the darkly handsome space hound that the greater part of the people brought alive out of this place would have to thank for their deliverance.

Jellico twisted around. The Salty Sue was clearly visible from the shattered Patrol flier, and so, too, were the clouds of smoke and the sullen glow of flames rising from the broken dock beside her. He could not tell whether the freighter herself was already ablaze.

He came to his feet. "The ship's my business," he told Cofort and the injured yeoman. "A Medic's what's needed here at the moment, and that we've got"

Rael looked up at him. "Miceal . . ."

The Captain shook his head. "You're hurt," he said quietly, "and Keil's hurt worse." His voice dropped. "He's also been alone through too much of this already."

It was a command, however softly voiced. The woman's head lowered, as much to conceal the weight of grief and loss she feared she would not otherwise be able to mask as to give her assent.

Jellico said nothing more to either of them. He turned from the pair and ran for the threatened freighter. Maybe there was no chance, probably there was none, but he was not going to surrender to the Grim Commandant without the best damn fight of his life. He would not quietly give over Rael or that wounded Yeoman or the rest of his crew, most of whom would by now be working in the ruins above, oblivious to the peril once again overshadowing them all.

His lips tightened. If only the Patrol agent's transceiver had not been shattered in the crash he would at least have been able to sound the alarm, but one quick look had been sufficient to tell him he would send no warning out by that route, and there would be no point at all in trying to do so on foot. With the possibility of flight blocked, the fires would have to be kept away from the Sally Sue's cargo if a second, even more violent explosion was not to rip them all to shreds.

For one instant, he knew a stab of regret as hard and sharp as a physical blow. Perhaps he should not have refused Rael Cofort's help, he thought. If nothing else, they might then at least have met their deaths together.

Angrily, he put that from his mind. The Medic had her own work to do, and with one or more cracked ribs, she would have been hard pressed to carry the strenuous activity that probably lay ahead of him if he was given the time to half begin. Fate had assigned each of them his own task in this one. They had no alternative, either of them, but to accept that fact and get on with it.

The need for speed lay on him like the lash of a force whip, with only minutes or maybe mere seconds standing between them all and oblivion, but the course he had to run was neither smooth nor straight. Rubble of every conceivable size and nature lay strewn in his path. Some of it he could sidestep or jump. Some large pieces forced him to detour altogether.

Each time he had to try a new way, his heart beat faster in fear. If he miscalculated, failed to follow the route he had so hastily planned out for himself, and wound up in a morass of big stuff or blocked by a wall of rubbish that would require real climbing, he might as well just sit back and wait for death . . .

The Solly Sue was in front of him. To his relief, he saw that she was as yet untouched. Only the dock beside her was aflame. It was not a massive conflagration, either, praise the Spirit ruling space, but rather several small fires, two of them already perilously near the freighter, burning independently of one another.

Luck was with him. Access to the dock had not been blocked, and the freighter's deck was reasonably close to its surface. The Free Trader raced for her, dodging the flames and those places where the surface was splintered and either raised or altogether absent.

Only when he reached the Sally Sue did he at last come to a stop. Her rail was near but still far enough to make the gaining of it a challenge in itself.

It was a leap, he thought, even for a fully fresh man, but to judge by those fires, he had no option but to succeed and to do it in his first couple of tries.

Jellico steeled himself, tested his balance, and sprang.

His hands closed over the sturdy curve of the railing even as his feet slammed against the side. With that for a brace, he leapt again, this time vaulting over the rail onto the deck of the imperiled vessel.

Miceal did not pause. He had always liked watercraft and had indulged that liking by learning as much as he could about them, seeking practical experience as well as theoretical knowledge when he got the chance. That should stand by him here. Canuche of Halio was a typical industrial mechanized colony, and her people were not particularly innovative. They had no need to be with respect to the forms of transportation they adopted. The information he had picked up elsewhere should apply well enough here to allow him to accomplish what he had to do.

The freighter's hatches were open, blown off by the force of the explosion. He ran for the sternmost one and half climbed, half dropped below. To his relief, the seacocks were where he expected to find them, and he threw them open, letting the cold ocean water into as many of the holds as were low enough to receive it.

That done, the spacer returned to the deck and darted once more to the prow.

He had come up none too soon. One of the fires was already licking the Salty Sue's side.

Jellico's tongue ran across dry lips. The metal plates would not burn, but her deck would once the flames came so far.

That was irrelevant. As far as he knew, the ammonium nitrate inside did not require the actual touch of fire to go up. A significant rise in temperature would probably accomplish that just as effectively.

The fire guns, too, were stored where reason and his knowledge of similar vessels said they should be. He freed the one closest to the charging fires. Now, if only it still functioned. Equipment like this was built to keep on working under emergency conditions, but an explosion of such magnitude at such proximity . . .