David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

Dame, it’s cold, too. Carl twisted, looking for something, anything.

There. A set of tools. He glided by the berth rack stretched—and snatched up an autowrench. Carefully he aimed at the figure ten meters away and threw.

It missed by a good meter. Carl could see the man’s face split into a sardonic grin, the lips moving, describing it all with obvious delight for the Edmund’s bridge.

Which was what Carl wanted. Throwing the heavy wrench had given him a new vector. He coasted across the bay, windmilled, carne about to absorb the impact with his legs.

Where was the damned—?

He sprang for it. The fire extinguisher easily jerked free of its clasp. Carl pointed the nozzle at his feet and fired. A pearly white cloud billowed under him and he shot back across the bay, still no closer to the seal-and-flood.

His ears popped again. Purple flecks brushed at his eyes, making firefly patterns …

He struck the opposite wall, this time unprepared. A handle jabbed him in the ribs.

Where was… ? He launched himself at the man, riding a foam jet. Halfway there he cat-twisted, bringing the fire-extinguisher nozzle to bear ahead of him—and slammed it on full.

Action and reaction. He slowed, stopped—and the frothing white cloud enveloped him. He fired again and rushed backward, out of the thinning smoke.

Darkening purple everywhere. The raw light of the berth lamps couldn’t seem to cut through it …

Now, before the roiling fog cleared, he flipped again and fired one more time. He flew through blank whiteness—and struck something soft, yielding.

He grabbed at the man with one arm, bringing around the extinguisher. Hands snatched at him, clawed at his face mask.

Vectors, vectors…

Which way… ?

It didn’t matter. He pressed the nozzle against the man and pulsed it again.

Billowing gray gas.

Cold, so cold…

… A huge hand pushing him backward…

A long second of gliding… the extinguisher slipped away… numb hands… he was tumbling… aching cold in his legs… impossible to see…the purple getting darker…shot through with bee-swarm white flecks darting in and out…in and out…spinning…

—then a jolting stab of pain in his leg, crack as his skull hit decking.

It jarred him back to alertness. He clawed for a hold. Looked up.

The fog was thinning. Directly out through the lock Carl could see the suited figure wriggling, dwindling, trying to get reoriented to use his jets. An insect, silvery and graceful…

The thrust of the last pulse had acted equally efficiently on each of them, driving Carl inward and the other man out.

He sprang for the seal-and-flood. Grasped it, pulled. The lock slid shut just before his opponent reached it, and the loud roaring hiss of high-pressure air sounded for all the world like a blaring, rude cry of celebration.

“I made it,” Carl said into his comm. “The tubes are blocked.” He panted in the close, oily air of the pressurized cylinder.

“Good!” Ould-Harrad answered in his ears. Now there was no indecisiveness, no fatalism in the voice. “Linbarger, hear that?”

“What’s that jackass mouthing about?” carne the chief mutineer’s sneer.

“Carl Osborn has jammed up the fusion feed lines,” Ould-Harrad said precisely.

Faintly the voice of Helga Steppins: “Fuck! I told you to cover the fore tubes!”

Even fainter: “He must’ve crawled through them from Three F section. Shit, we can’t cover every little.”

“Shut up .” Linbarger’s voice got louder as he addressed Ould-Harrad. “We’ll sweat him out of there.”

“You try it and I’ll vent the tritium,” Carl said tensely.

“What?” Linbarger could barely contain his anger. He demanded of some unseen lieutenant, “Can he do that?”

Faintly: “I don’t… Yeah, if he opened those pressure lines into the core storage. He might’ve had time to do that.”

“Without tritium to burn, your fusion pit won’t reach trigger temperature,” Carl added helpfully, grinning.

“You—!” Linbarger’s line went dead.

Carl twisted and made sure the entrance behind him had a hefty tool cabinet jamming the way. He had long-lever wrenches on the two crucial pressure points, ready to crack open the valves. They could come at him from behind, but he could spray a lot of precious fuel out into space before they got the valves closed again. Enough to kill their plans, certainly.

“Are you sure you can do it, Osborn?” Ould-Harrad asked cautiously.

“Yeah.” What do you want me to say? No? With Linbarger listening ?

“Well, this certainly gives us a better bargaining position…

“Bargain, hell! We’ve got ’em by the balls.”

“If they get to you fast enough, perhaps they can retain enough tritium to make a multiple flyby with Mars. Draw lots to use the nine slots they have now. Then.”

“Cut that crap.” Go ahead, give them ideas.

“I’m simply.”

“I said cut it! ”

“I’m trying to prevent.”

“It’s not your ass on the line over here, Ould-Harrad.”

He twisted, watching the feeder lines drop away to the left. If somebody wriggled in that way, they might try to shoot at him. But that would be stupid, right in the middle of the fusion core. Damage these fittings and they would take weeks to replace, if ever.

Linbarger’s grim voice said, “You hear me on this hookup, Osborn?”

“I’m right here, just a friendly hundred meters away.”

Silence. Then Linbarger’s reedy, tight voice said slowly, “We’ll fire the start-up pinch if you don’t leave.”

Carl caught his breath, let it out slowly. That was the one alternative he hadn’t mentioned to anybody. It wasn’t smart, because start-up could do real damage if you handled it wrong—and Linbarger had no experience at that. But he had seen the possibility of frying Carl as the hot fluids squirted through this network of tubes. And Linbarger was just desperate enough to do it.

He said as calmly as he could, “You’ll burn out the throat.”

“Not if we’re careful. It won’t take too much fusion fire to cook you up to a nice, brown glaze.” Linbarger was clearly enjoying himself, thinking he had turned the tables.

“I’ll vent the tritium anyway.” Now let’s see how much he knows.

“No, you won’t. The subsystems will shut down those lines as soon as we start up. It’s automatic—says so right in the blueprints.”

Damn . “That’s not the way it’ll work.” Bluff .

“Don’t try that crap on me.”

Linbarger was smarter than Carl had thought. But he wasn’t going to win.

“You’ll never get back Earthside. You’re low on tritium as it is. I’ll blow enough of it to make sure you have a long voyage. You’ll never pick up the delta-V for a Jupiter carom. Even with the sleep slots, you’ll starve.”

“We’ve got the hydroponics.”

“Sure. And no extra water to run it.”

“There’s Halley ice right outside.”

“Try stepping outside.” Carl played a hunch “Hey—Jeffers! What happened to that Arcist I blew out the lock?”

—What Arcist? All I see is bits ’n pieces.—

Silence.

This tit-for-tat couldn’t go on much longer. Linbarger’s voice was getting thin, hollow-sounding. The man’s words came too fast, spurting out under pressure.

Carl bunched his jaw muscles, wondering if he believed his own words. If Linbarger acted, it would be a matter of seconds. Carl would have to choose whether to launch himself for the aft hatch and try to get away, or to use the wrenches. No time for dithering…

“You’re lying.” Linbarger didn’t sound so certain now.