automated voice advised. “Take shelter! Take shelter!”
“Dad!” I cried out into my comm-link. If the Field failed under load, no one in the after sections of Broad Arrow could even hope to survive. “Get out of there!”
“I love you, David,” he responded. “Make your mother and me proud!”
Then there was a brilliant flash. I felt the torn, unbalanced Field waver sickeningly…
…and everything aft of the emergency buffer bulkhead collapsed into another universe. Including Dad.
5
I didn’t have much time to think about Dad being gone just then—as catastrophic as a Field collapse was for the engineering spaces, the disaster was plenty brutal on the rest of the ship, too. It was sort of like an unbalanced liftoff in that it torqued the hull more ways than ordinary beings could perceive, only about a bajillion times worse. Not a single ship had ever been salvaged once her engine rooms collapsed, not even billion-credit liners. Proud Broad Arrow was now little more than scrap, even her tiniest component parts too distorted for re-use.
The first thing I had to do, being caught in passenger country at the time of the disaster, was to make certain of the hull integrity of whatever compartment I found myself in until receiving definite instructions from a fully-qualified spacer— my textbook on dealing with space emergencies was very clear on the subject. I pushed myself up off the deck and half-spun in mid-air. The wall indicator was strobing brilliant red, and fast—there was major leakage taking place somewhere! I bounced off the ceiling— a bit clumsily because I’d hadn’t gotten around to advanced null-gee maneuvering training yet— and grabbed the bundle of tarpatches stored behind the telltale. But it wasn’t long before I realized my efforts were hopeless. I’d placed perhaps my dozenth patch when I looked further forward and saw that at least ten structural members had somehow been driven through the main for’ard bulkhead. They were still protruding, so no mere tarpatch could hope to stop the resulting gaps. Reluctantly, for the main companionway was a key ship’s thoroughfare, I grabbed my spare EVA cylinders, fell back and sealed the emergency airlock.
By then I was almost halfway through my patches, and for what gain? While I might’ve been able to maintain pressure in the corridor I was standing in, I stopped and asked myself what the point would be? My prime duty was supposed to be ensuring the safety of the passengers, after all, and there weren’t any around to breathe the air I might or might not save. Dad had taught me that when in doubt following the book was usually the best thing to do. “Usually” wasn’t the same as “always”, he’d also explained, and I figured that maybe this was one of those times.
So I looked up and down the corridor for inspiration, and my guts froze. I was in the VIP area now, where the over-large cabins were built right up against the outer hull so that they might be equipped with oversized viewports. That also meant they were up against hard vacuum…
…and sure enough, every single telltale was solid red, save milord’s own! And even it was blinking fast!
Cursing myself for a stupid fool and blindly following the rules, I leap down the passage and pulled myself up when I reached milord’s lock. The solid red cabins held only dead men, it was virtually certain, while here there was still at least faint hope. The pressure-door refused to cycle until I entered my crewman’s override code—it was telling me that the air was unbreathable on the far side, on the assumption I was a passenger too silly to read the telltale. Then finally the door rose…
…and there arose the most ungodly wind I’d ever known as the already-thin corridor air rushed into what couldn’t have been more than a fifth of an atmosphere or so.
There wasn’t time to think; as the gale eased to a mere strong breeze I released the fitting I’d been holding clamped between my hindpaws and let the flow draw me under the still-rising door and inside. Instantly it was clear what was the matter—a line of six evenly-spaced hand-sized dents, presumably the result of hits from an atmospheric fighter’s cannon, ran at an angle just blow the largest viewport. Each was tarpatched—apparently someone had thought and acted quickly, for a passenger. But the cracks at the center of each dent were too large and had sucked the patch-juice on through. Without raising my head I peeled and slapped two more patches on each dent. The two toughest were the last ones on the far end, where some intelligent but untrained person had tried stuffing their socks down into the leaky juice—it’d probably helped some, but of course wasn’t nearly good enough. I yanked the ruined silk out, then glommed on my double-patches and pushed off for the pressure door. It closed without making a fuss, and was almost all the way down when I yanked open the ‘dump’ valve on my one of my EVA tanks to restore pressure. Next I opened my helmet-visor and listened intently—there was a distinct whistle emerging from the closet, which was set against the now-vacuum-filled cabin next door. I floated inside, closed my eyes, concentrated…
…and almost without looking slapped my last patch on a stress-crack perhaps half an inch long. For an instant, I let my head hang in relief— milord’s cabin was sound again, or at least sound enough for the moment. But…
…instantly I was in motion again, my conscious mind registering what I’d previously shut out in my single-minded—and quite proper—focus on restoring pressure. I looked down at the King’s Ambassador as I floated by—he was messily dead, apparently from the five-gee fall. So was Jenkins, milord’s beloved manservant and a Rabbit like me. He was halfway into a survival bubble but hadn’t quite made it. Nearer the viewport lay a now-collapsed bubble that’d been all nice and puffy when I’d first arrived; now that the outside pressure was back up, it’d collapsed. In it lay James, milord’s son, who oddly wasn’t wearing any socks. He was also slowly turning blue.
And so was milord himself, lying in his bed inside yet another collapsed bubble!
6
My Field suit was equipped with an otherwise standard-issue spaceman’s knife that was made out of warp-resistant material. Not that warp-resistance mattered at the moment; my Field had been off since the visor was cracked. Being careful not cut either victim, I slashed open their bubbles so they could breathe good, clean air. Almost instantly their color improved, which was a good thing since I’d still not had any first-aid training yet. It wasn’t until I got around to removing the bubbles entirely that I realized milord was wearing a med-unit strapped to his chest, which was flashing red in two places and yellow in a third.
And I didn’t have a clue what to do about it!
Just then James coughed and began to throw up; glad of the distraction I snatched a sick-kit off the wall and helped milord’s son make use of it, then used the attached vacuum bottle to snatch the little gobbets where he’d missed out of the air. There was nothing worse than loose vomit under freefall; the stuff was so corrosive and nasty that extraordinary precautions were justified when accidents happened. By the time I was finished James was floating by his father’s bedside, looking at the same blinking lights that I’d noted earlier. He didn’t seem to have any idea of what to do about them, either. Finally, one of the reds went yellow on its own and the yellow quite blinking entirely. “That’s a good sign, I hope,” he said to me.
“Yes, sir!” I agreed, not quite certain about how to address milord’s son. I’d never been much on etiquette and things like that. Unlike most passengers, milord had a ship’s computer at his desk; I pulled myself into a sitting position and began pulling up screens, trying to find us some help.
“The gravity failed,” James offered, sounding younger than his true age. Which was about the same as mine. “Jerome fell, and his neck went at a funny angle. Then Dad had a seizure, and while Jenkins was getting the ‘doc unit running there was a big explosion! The air was already getting thin, and that was enough for Jenkins! He stuffed Dad in a bag, then me. But he… He…” James looked down at the Rabbit’s stiffening corpse.
“I know,” I answered softly. The computer wasn’t cooperating at all—even the ship’s core systems were
mostly down. But I didn’t let the frustration show in my voice. “Who patched the holes?” I asked.
“I did!” James replied brightly, obviously glad of the distraction. As I’d rather hoped, actually. “Each and every one—I learned about tarpatches from my tutor, Mrs. Plainsfield. She used to be a space-marine!” Then his face fell again. “Everyone else was too busy. But I didn’t do a very good job, I guess. They still leaked. Even after I used my socks too.”
I nodded again—some of the cockpit systems were still running. I got a nice, clean close-up of a gore-smeared suit-visor that was still boiling off liquids into space. Captain Saunder’s name was inscribed just above the bloody mess. I switched back to a blank screen before James could recognize the image. “You did good work, sir,” I countered. “But without specialized training you had no way of knowing that you needed to double the patches.” I looked up and smiled. “And when I saw the socks, I knew someone had thought quickly.”
James smiled back at me, clearly uncertain if he was being flattered or not. “Doctor Lewis was taking the day off,” he explained, turning back to his father. “That’s Dad’s special doctor. So, we had to leave without