Zach Hughes - Pressure Man

“With a small difference,” Neil said. “If we take her back we’ll be alive.”

“Do you think you’d enjoy life as a groundling, Neil?” J.J. asked.

“You’ve got a point,” Neil said.

“Jensen,” Dom said into the communications system, “I want you to go over the engineroom with everything you’ve got, including your fingertips. The rest of us will use portable sniffers. Tune the sniffers to plastique. That’s the material most used by the Firsters. Ellen, you take the food supplies. If there’s a bomb aboard, my best guess is in supplies. If it was built into the ship, then I’d say they’d aim for the engineroom, where it would do the most damage. Doris, run me this problem. Give me a reading on what it would take to make it seem that the Kennedy is decelerating and then turning back to the moon. They might be measuring the strength of our radio transmissions. We want them to think we’re following their orders, at least for a while. Unless they carried it in with them, and it’s unlikely, they don’t have visual equipment in station eight-five.”

It took Doris three minutes. “I’ve set up an automatic power curve into the radio. The signals will grow slightly weaker at a decelerating ratio and then grow stronger.”

“ J.F.K ., this is Moon Control. Ready on your radio patch. Go ahead station eight-five.”

“Gordon,” said the young and tense voice, “this is the voice of freedom.”

“The voice of a punk, you mean,” Dom said. “I want you to listen and listen carefully. We’re calling your bluff. We’ve checked every atom of weight aboard this ship, and you’re lying. There is no bomb aboard. We’re heading out and we’ll continue to accelerate. I just wanted the personal satisfaction of telling you, because in about one minute I’m going to order Moon Security to blast station eight-five with one small newk. Burn happily, punk.”

He waited, eyes troubled.

The young voice seemed to be just short of hysteria.

“You’re the punk, Gordon. You’re the one who is robbing the people. You’re the one who’s going to die, you and all the other parasites aboard. We can detonate the bomb from here, or if you use your newk on us it will go off with its own timer. Either way you’re dead. This is your last chance to turn back. You’ll be given a fair trial before a tribunal of the people.”

“Punk,” Dom said, “you have about one minute to live. You don’t seem to understand that we’re wise to you. You’re all mouth. There’s no way you punks could get a bomb aboard. No way. Goodbye, punk. Moon Control, this is Captain Gordon. I order that in exactly one minute you send one small nuclear warhead right down the gut of station eight-five. J.F.K . over and out.”

The next voice was different, low, smooth, unexcited. “Good try, Captain Gordon,” the man’s voice said. “We who love freedom don’t believe in needless shedding of blood, nor in the waste of resources. If we did, I would push the button myself. However, we would like to salvage the Kennedy for scrap to build factories for production of consumer goods for the people.”

“Anyone recognize the voice?” Dom asked, over the intership circuits.

“I assure you, Captain Gordon, that there is a bomb and that it will go off at a time of our choosing. I can guarantee that the Kennedy will be destroyed totally. I can promise you that she’ll burst open like a melon and that all of you will die with her.”

“I’ve got him,” Art said into Dom’s earphones. “He’s service, in charge of loading the water. His name is Bensen.”

“The damned water,” Dom said, throwing aside the phones. “It’s in the damned water. He said we’d burst open like a melon. One small charge wouldn’t burst this ship open unless the force were compressed by a large volume of water. Let’s go.”

“Captain Gordon?” the smooth, calm voice said.

Dom went back to the radio. “Go ahead.”

“I am pleased to note that in spite of your brave talk you are presently decelerating.”

“You have radio scanners, then,” Dom said.

“We do. We estimate full stop and turnaround at 2130 Zulu.”

“Hold one,” Dom said. Then, leaving the communicator open, “Please give me an estimate of turnaround time.”

“2134 Zulu,” Doris said.

“Station eight-five,” Dom said, “turnaround time is 2134 Zulu.”

“Noted,” Bensen said. “And now Admiral Pinkerton will make his broadcast to Earth.”

Dom said, “The broadcast will be made at 2134 Zulu, our turnaround time.”

There was a silence. He could imagine the terrorists consulting among themselves, trying to figure out why he insisted on waiting two hours and forty minutes before making the broadcast. Evidently they decided that the delay could do their cause no harm, since the Kennedy was obeying orders.

“That is agreeable,” Bensen said. “It will give us time to pass the text of the statement to be broadcast to the people of Earth to Moon Control.”

“J.J., take communications,” Dom said. He grinned. Hell, command was not so difficult after all. “Neil, it’s you and me. We have two hours and thirty-nine minutes to find that bomb.”

“I’m with you,” Neil said.

Neil was into his suit before Dom. He had more practice. He checked Dom’s life-support gear and turned to allow Dom to check his backpack. Less than five minutes had elapsed when they entered a lock chamber offering access to the hold, that vast space which made up the main volume of the ship and which was filled with thousands of tons of pure water from Earthside purification plants.

“Any idea where to start?” Dom asked, his internal suit radio on open channel to be broadcast throughout the ship.

“I have estimated that it would take a minimum of five kilos of plastique to blow her,” Doris said. Her voice was cool, professional. “However, with the masses I’m dealing with in the hold I can’t distinguish so small a weight. The problem is compounded by a minor difference in temperature in various hold sections, enough to vary weight per unit of water.”

“Make a note of that,” Dom said. “In future well want to be able to scan the interior of the hold. Right now we have to figure on combing every inch of the hold, right?”

“I’m afraid so,” Doris said.

“Maximum effect would be obtained by placing the charge near the geometric center,” Neil said.

“Good thinking,” Dom said. “Well start from the center bulkheads and work toward bow and stern. I’ll go sternward, Neil. I’d say check the hogging girders and bulkhead supports first. Bensen must be sharp enough to realize that convection currents will be set up in this mass of water, so if he wanted to keep his blast near the center of mass, he’d secure it so that it wouldn’t float around on the currents.”

“That’s a roger,” Neil said.

The lock filled and opened into the hold. Dom could feel the psychological weight of tons of water on him as he moved out into the vastness. The blackness was total. Their lights made lances of brightness into the pit ahead of them. They swam side by side through huge bays of the hold and reached the center after what seemed to Dom to be miles of swimming. They were back to back for a moment, light beams pointing in different directions. Dom moved off, moving his head to direct the light. Reaching the first system of supports, he began a swift but careful search. He noted the time required to completely examine the bulkhead and did a calculation in his head. At that rate the bomb would explode, estimating that the terrorists would act when the turnaround time came and went and no broadcast went out to Earth, before they could cover half of the hold area.