Ben Bova - End of Exile

Linc was too furious to say a word. His voice gagged in his throat.

Silently, the guards opened the airlock hatch and pushed Linc inside. He fell to the floor in a heap. Before he could get to his knees, the hatch slammed shut.

The green panel light changed to amber. Linc could hear the pumps starting. The air was being sucked out of the chamber.

Linc scrambled to his feet and clawed at the control panel. No use. Monel had jammed it, somehow. But underneath the panel lights and the regular cycle control buttons there was a red button marked EMERGENCY OVERRIDE. Jerlet had explained to Linc that the override would stop the airlock’s operation and fill the chamber with air whenever it was pushed.

Linc leaned on it. Nothing. The pumps kept on throbbing, the pulse in Linc’s ears was pounding in rhythm with it.

He’s tampered with the controls! Monel himself has tampered with the machinery!

But the realization wasn’t going to help, Linc knew.

Already it was difficult to breathe. Linc staggered to the access panel where the pumps and oxygen bottles were hidden. He flicked the latches open and the panel slid to the floor with a crash.

An empty pressure suit was hanging limply inside the compartment. Linc grabbed at the helmet and quickly pulled it over his head. There was enough air in it to let him take one quick breath. Blinking away the dark spots from his vision, he saw that there were instructions printed on the wall of the compartment, under a red EMERGENCY PROCEDURE heading.

Blessing Jerlet for teaching him to read, Linc reached for the emergency oxygen Linc that connected to a green metal tank and plugged it into the collar of his helmet. The stuff tasted stale and felt cold, but it was breathable.

Linc quickly sealed the helmet, pulled the oxygen tanks and life support pack from the emergency suit onto his own back, and then disconnected the emergency oxygen supply Linc. He was fully suited up, able to face hard vacuum without danger.

He turned and saw that the amber control light was still on. As he lifted the access panel back into place, the light turned red and the outer hatch began to open.

If I slay here, they’ll just take this equipment away from me and do it all over again, Linc thought. There was only one escape route: outside.

He clumped to the lip of the hatch and stepped outside once again. Grimly, Linc stood there and watched the hatch close.

He wished he could see the look on Monet’s face when they opened the airlock and he was gone. Would they think he had been whisked away to outer darkness? Or would Monel guess that Linc had somehow escaped?

Either way, Monel would probably keep a guard or two at the hatch, just in case Linc should try to get back.

H is earlier weariness was still tugging at him. But now he had the adrenalin-fueled fires of survival and hatred urging him on.

Carefully he paced along the catwalk built into the Wheel’s outer skin. As Baryta “rose” from behind the curve of the Wheel, Linc could see in its golden light that the metal of the ship was pitted and streaked, marked by time and the vast distances the ship had traveled.

Here and there were larger holes, actual punctures, and Linc began to understand why some sections of the Living Wheel were closed off. No air. It leaked out of the holes.

In one place there was a gaping wound in the Wheel’s side. He could peer inside and see an empty room; nothing in it except a few tables welded firmly to the floor. There were some viewing screens built into the tabletops.

And then Baryta’s sunlight glinted off the rounded hump of an airlock hatch. Linc felt a surge of joy warm his innards. He shouted to himself and dashed toward the airlock as fast as he could.

It wouldn’t budge. He pushed the buttons a dozen times, but the hatch refused to move. Then, remembering what Jerlet had taught him, he tried the long lever of the hatch’s manual control. It too remained frozen in place.

Linc wanted to cry. He sank to a sitting position as Baryta slid out of sight. The stars looked down impassively on. the figure of alone, exhausted, frightened young man as he sat and felt the warmth of life ebbing out of his body.

Then Linc remembered. The hole in the ship. Maybe I can get through there.

He backtracked and found the ragged hole again. It was barely big enough for his shoulders to squeeze through. Praying that he wouldn’t rip the suit’s fabric. Linc crawled through and put his booted feet down on the room’s bare metal flooring. The tough suit fabric held up. His backpack stuck in the opening for a scary moment, but Linc managed to worm it through. He stood up.

I’m inside, but it’s just as bad as being outside unless I can get past this room.

There were two doors in the room. Linc saw in the light of his helmet lamp. One of them looked as if it opened onto a corridor; it was heavy, airtight, as all the corridor doors were. But the other, on a side wall, looked as if it were made of plastic rather than metal.

Linc tried to pull it open. It refused to slide as it should. He leaned against it, and it bowed slightly. He backed off a step, then kicked at the door with the metal sole of his boot with all the strength he could muster.

The door split apart.

Linc stepped through the sagging halves.

Into the Ghost Place.

Despite himself he shuddered. Inside the ghosts were mute and immobile, their faces frozen in twisted soundless screams of horror and pain. Their eyes stared; their bodies slumped or sagged; their hands reached for control buttons, the hatches leading out of the bridge, or just groped blindly. Most of the ghosts still sat at the bridge’s control stations, in front of instruments that were mostly dead. Only a pitiful few of the screens still flickered with active displays. Linc saw.

He noticed that a couple of the ghosts were staring up overhead. Linc looked up and saw that several pipes were split up there, hanging loosely from broken brackets. From the faded colors, Linc knew that the pipes at one time must have carried liquid oxygen and liquid helium.

They must have been frozen where they stood, when whatever tore the hole in the next room broke the pipes.

Suddenly, they weren’t ghosts anymore. They were people like himself, like Jerlet, like Slav or Magda or Jayna or any of the others. Real people who died at their posts, trying to save the ship instead of running away.

There was no fear in Linc now. But his eyes were blurry as he realized that these people had given their lives so that the ship could continue living.

Slowly, Linc made his way past the dead bridge crew, heading toward the hatch that opened onto the passageway outside. They protected the bridge with airlocks, so that a loss of air outside wouldn’t hurt the crew in here…and then the disaster struck from inside the bridge itself.

The airlock hatch was frozen shut, of course. It took Linc several moments to remember that there were tools here on the bridge. He found a laser handwelder, plugged it into the bridge’s power supply, and grinned with relief when it worked. He set the tool on low power and played its thin red beam across the hatch mechanism.

The metal creaked and ticked and finally, when Linc tried the handle for the eleventh time, clicked open. Linc stepped into the airtight compartment between the two hatches, closed the inner hatch and opened the outer one. Warm air from the passageway rushed in, making it hard to push the hatch open.

But it did open, and Linc stood out in the familiar passageway once again. He started toward the library, hoping that the meeting was still going on. He unsealed his helmet as he clumped along the corridor, after clamping the hand-welder to a clip on the side of his suit.