Джек Макдевитт - Deepsix

All but Phil and Miles withdrew into the shuttles. Phil set the sensor.

"You sure it'll work?" asked Miles.

"Absolutely."

"How long will it take to close after the lander's inside?"

"It activates as soon as they pass through. I'm no physicist, so I can't tell you how fast the collar will deflate. But it shouldn't be longer than a few seconds. Especially at that altitude."

Miles inspected the collar. "I think we have ourselves a decent scoop."

At about the time Miles's people were climbing onto the net, the welding teams were spreading out across the hulls of the four super-luminals. Tom Scolari, Cleo, Jack Kingsbury, and an elderly man whom Scolari knew only as Chop, had responsibility for Zwick. The task should now be easy, because Jack and Chop had performed much the same assignment working alone earlier when they'd attached the star-ship to the Alpha shaft.

Scolari had been invited by Universal News to participate in an interview. Emma had found jumpsuits for him and Cleo, and the plan called for them to go on a live hookup when the job on the hull was finished. He was unnerved by the prospect, more frightened than he could ever have been about going outside.

It should have been easier to interview Chop and Jack, who'd been on board longer, and Scolari had wondered at first why Emma hadn't done that. But it became clear very quickly that neither of the two was very articulate. Jack responded to everything with one-word answers. And Chop scratched a lot. Scolari was concerned that they'd be resentful, but neither brought the subject up. When he told them about the pending interview, Chop had commented that he was glad they hadn't asked him.

Zwick was the leading vessel on the shaft, only thirty-eight kilometers from the net, which they could see shining in the sunlight. Sometimes it made Scolari think of a flag.

The shaft was currently welded to the belly of the Zwick. They went out through the cargo hatch on the port quarter and walked around to the underside, and it seemed as if the universe rotated as they did so, so that the hull was always down. It was an effect caused by the magnetic boots.

When they were ready, Cleo and Scolari retired to the rear, Jack and Chop went forward. They activated their lasers and began cutting the weld. Now that the shaft was safely on course, and no more corrections would be needed, they were to separate it from the ship and change its orientation. "Be careful," Janet reminded them from her station in Drummond's launch, which was up near the net. This was the most dangerous part of the operation for the Outsiders: cut too high, and they could slice or seriously weaken Alpha. Do that, they'd been told again and again, and repair would be impossible. The people below would die. Cut too low, and they could penetrate the ship. That indeed was not life and death. Everyone had been cleared out of areas vulnerable to puncture on all the vessels. But it would nevertheless, in Janet's dulcet admonition, have been unprofessional. A mess that someone else would have to clean up later.

The clear lesson: If they had to screw it up, cut low.

Getting it right wasn't all that hard, he discovered, so long as he kept his mind on what he was doing. The image of the gas giant, growing visibly larger by the hour, did tend to be a distraction.

They began cutting. Jack and Chop had done a good job the first time out. Their instructions had been to connect as much of the shaft as possible to the hull. They'd done that, and it required a long effort to free it. Zwick was by far the smallest of the superluminals, but she had accepted a twenty-six-meter length of the shaft before her hull curved away.

So they worked steadily, in the shadow of the giant. Scolari had heard that almost a full kilometer had been laid on the Star. Getting that off would be a monster job, but that was where they'd concentrated the volunteers.

Janet, as usual, was watching. Occasionally she offered advice or encouragement. She let them know that Wendy's crew had finished, that the people preparing the net to receive its payload were making progress. She always referred to the lander as the payload. Scolari decided she watched too many sims.

They needed an hour and a quarter to break the shaft loose, and they did it without inflicting any damage. Jack, who was the team leader, informed Janet when they were done. She acknowledged, thanked them, and directed them to retire inside the ship. "But, don't go far," she said.

"How long?"

"About four hours."

"We won't last that long."

It was hard to believe the sun had been in the sky an hour and a half. The wind roared across the lander. Rain hammered down, and the water coming off the mountain had become a torrent. They huddled inside the darkened cabin while the storm raged.

"I think conditions are deteriorating," said Mac.

Hutch nodded. "That would be my guess. We'd better tie down if we don't want to get blown into the ocean."

They went outside and struggled to lash the lander to the trees. The winds were approaching hurricane force. That meant flying objects, branches, rocks, and even birds that had gotten caught, became missiles.

They were all short of breath when they got back inside. They fell into their seats, feeling safer but not by much.

On the bridge of the Star, Nicholson and Marcel received Drummond's report. Only the giant liner itself was now still attached to Alpha.

Nicholson looked questioningly at Marcel. "Now?" he asked.

Marcel nodded.

Nicholson addressed the AI: "Lori, we are going to the next phase. You can turn Zwick around."

"Complying,"said Lori.

"Lori?" said Marcel. "Have we had any luck yet reestablishing contact with the ground party?"

"No, Marcel. I am still trying and will inform you when I am successful."

He nodded, and turned his attention to Zwick's status board, which was posted on one of the navigation screens. The media vessel, under Lori's direction, began to pull away from the shaft. Its thrusters would fire an orchestrated series of bursts, moving it out to one side, turning it around, and bringing it back, but facing in the opposite direction. Now, its main engines pointed toward Deepsix, it moved in once more to snuggle against Alpha.

During the course of the maneuver, word came down that the Outsiders had released the Star.

On board Zwick, Scolari and the other volunteers returned to the hull and began the cumbersome process of reattaching the shaft. Now the vessel was pointed in the opposite direction, away from Deepsix. Almost immediately, one of the shuttle pilots warned them of an approaching cloud.

"Cloud?" asked Scolari.

"Meteors and dust. Get back inside."

Scolari and Cleo needed no prompting. They made for the airlock, and warned Chop and Jack not to dawdle.

A few large rocks bounced off the metal. Minutes later, when they thought it was over, one penetrated the hull, knocked out the broadcasting studio and the library, and would have killed Canyon except that he'd left moments earlier to go to the washroom.

The warning had come from Klaus Bomar, who had taken Pindar and Sharon to mark the Alpha shaft. He was, as Pindar had observed, Canadian. A Toronto native, he'd been a commercial hauler, carrying supplies to the terraformers on Quraqua; and later he'd served as a longtime instructor at the Conciliar Spaceflight Academy near Winnipeg. He'd resigned his position there two months earlier, anxious to join the superluminals that were moving out to the new frontiers.

Klaus's wife was dead, his kids were grown and gone, so he'd barely hesitated once he decided he'd had enough of classrooms. He'd signed on with TransGalactic because they paid well and the big luxury liners were visiting the places he wanted to see, black holes and star cradles and giant suns and cosmic lighthouses.