Going Interstellar (27 page)

She was curious about the foods they couldn’t grow hydroponically, and Link explained at some length about protein sources. She made a suggestion about a way to make a sauce out of tree nuts, something she had picked up in the kitchens of the shelters, and Link listened with respect, nodding. “You worked in the kitchens?”

“Yeah. Yes. In the shelters.”

Tie Dye leaned against the wall as they talked, looking impatient. When they had unloaded the last of a stack of aluminum canisters, Link said, “Isabet. Would you like a tour of
Starhold
?”

The idea was so exciting that she forgot to school her features. She felt her face light up, and Link chuckled. “You’re welcome, too, Mr. Dykens,” he added. “Let me offer you a cup of tea in our common room.”

Tie Dye said sourly, “No time. Not for Isabet, either. She has work to do.”

Link said mildly, “She’s been working all day. Just as you have.”

Isabet stared at her feet, confused. No one had defended her in a very long time. Such consideration tempted her to let her heart soften, to allow a tiny crack in her customary shell. She knew better than that, of course. And there was Tie Dye’s scorn to remind her.

“That’s what we’re here for,” Tie Dye growled. “Gotta check the containment ring every six hours, like it or not.”

Isabet said, half under her breath, “It’s not my shift, Tie—uh, Mr. Dykens.”

Tie Dye said, “Oh, it’s Mr. Dykens now?”

Link said, “You can spare her for half an hour, surely.”

Tie Dye said, “Nope. Gotta get back to the ship. Nice of you, though.”

Isabet suddenly wanted to see the inside of
Starhold
more than anything in the universe. She wanted to turn away from Tie Dye’s sullen presence, and accept Link’s polite invitation. She longed to step into the vacuum elevator, that clever device they called the slip, and propel herself from one level to the next. She wanted to breathe in the scents of the hydroponics level with its trailing vines, inverted flats of vegetables, even fruit bushes tucked beneath the sills of the space windows. She wanted to see the cubbies, and the showers, and the common room on the galley level. She said, louder this time, “Mr. Dykens, I’m off duty till tomorrow.”

“Well, then,” the affable Link began, but Tie Dye grabbed Isabet’s arm.

“We’re going,” he said. His fingers pinched her flesh, and her cheeks flamed. She could have pulled away, but she didn’t. She couldn’t bear for the
Starhold
man to see her shame, to know how insignificant she really was.

Dropping her eyes, swallowing the bitter medicine of her pride, she walked back through the loading bay toward the lock, and the
North America
’s hold. She felt Link’s questioning gaze on her back, and her face burned hotter.

Tie Dye dropped her arm as they stepped over the rim of the seal. She glanced back once. Link had disappeared, gone back into
Starhold
without her. She stopped, and put her back to the drab gray surface of
North America
’s lock. She jutted her chin at Tie Dye above her folded arms. “When are you gonna let up on me?” she demanded.

Tie Dye, who had moved ahead of her, whirled. His face suffused, and his voice rose. “I haven’t done a thing to you.”

“Bullshit! You get in my way at every opportunity, you insult me, you make extra work—and now you can’t let me have even a half hour of freedom.”

He took a step toward her, balling his fists at his sides. Isabet was suddenly aware of how big he was, how thick his arms and thighs were, how mean the expression in his small eyes. She stiffened her back, but she took a swift glance around, looking for a way to escape.

“You had your chance,” he sneered. He came closer, and she could smell the tang of perspiration, feel the heat of his temper. “I was gonna be nice to you, Itty Bit! I was gonna be real nice, but you weren’t having any of it.”

“I don’t do that,” she said. She spoke as stoutly as she could, but she couldn’t control the tremor in her voice. He advanced until he was within arm’s length of her. She said, “I tried to tell you, Tie Dye. I don’t do it with anybody.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Everybody calls you that!”

“Not you, Itty Bit. Itty
Bitch
.” He reached for her, his meaty hand seizing the back of her neck, yanking her away from the curving wall of the lock. There was something about the hardness of his hand and the heat from his body that told her he meant it this time. He would force her. But she had sworn she would never be forced again. She had vowed to herself she would die first.

She writhed in his grip, trying to free herself. His other hand came up, reaching for her waist to pull her against him. There was no time even to think about what she was doing. He couldn’t hold her head, though he tried to grab at her cropped hair. She dropped, slid down his body, his legs. He cursed as he kicked at her, and caught her in the side. She rolled away from him, once, twice, the gray floor hard against her shoulders and knees. He lumbered after her, staying between her and the door leading from the hold into the safety of the ship. She leaped to her feet, spinning in a circle, searching for another escape.

She spotted the instrument panel that monitored the sealing ring, and dashed for it. Tie Dye came after her, his heavy feet making the whole lock vibrate. Her ribs hurt where he had kicked her, and her scalp stung where he had pulled her hair. There was no time to think about that now, no time to wonder if a rape would finally get Command’s attention. Like a monkey, she leaped up the laddered handholds toward the panel.

The panel was a good three feet above Tie Dye’s head. It took her only seconds to reach it. As Tie Dye flailed at her, she popped the clamps. The panel swung open, showing the many-legged crawler folded tightly into the cramped space. Belatedly, she realized she should have chosen the other side of the tube, but there was no time now.

“Get your hands off that!” Tie Dye roared. He braced his foot on one of the handholds, and started climbing toward her.

There was only one thing she could do, and even as she thought of it, she was already doing it. She turned on her side, sucked in her stomach, and slid past the crawler’s sharp angles into the cool darkness of the sealing ring.

Behind her, Tie Dye swore and banged his fist against the panel frame. She wriggled further into the ring so he couldn’t reach her foot and haul her back.

She would wait him out. It was tight, her hiding place, and unlike the maintenance ring of the
North America
, it was dark. She couldn’t see a thing, but she could breathe. She could take it. He would give up eventually, and leave her alone. She would slip back to her quarters and lie low until his temper wore off. She’d done that before.

It was a good plan, but she soon understood the flaw in it. She had underestimated the full force of Tie Dye’s rage. He was an engineer, a good one. He knew how to make machines work. She was just settling into the least bothersome position when she heard the slither and click of something coming up the ring behind her.

The damn crawler! Tie Dye had launched the crawler. She thought of the thin blades of its legs opening, stretching, moving it along the ring. She shuddered, imagining those blades cutting through the soft soles of her shoes. He was serious this time, deadly serious. She was no stranger to trouble, but this had to be the worst.

Panicked, she wriggled further into the ring, feeling her way in the blackness. The crawler’s mechanical sounds were like the clicking of someone’s arthritic knees, and they came steadily closer, driving her forward. Was it her imagination, or did the ring narrow as it circled the lock? She could hardly move her shoulders, and only just find purchase with her feet and the tips of her fingers, pushing herself along. The maintenance tube of
North America
had lights, and room for her to move her elbows, bend her knees. This was a nightmare tunnel of blackness and constriction, a coffin indeed. If she were an inch wider, a pound heavier, she would be trapped. Her breathing quickened, and her mouth dried.

Shit, she thought. A rock and a hard place. There was no choice, nothing she could do but press on. It was all too much like the shelters, choosing between two or more evils every damn day of her life. When she got out of here, she promised herself—and she
would
get out of here—she was going to make Tie Dye’s life a living hell!

Anger served her better than fear. She scooted forward through the tube as quickly as her thrusting toes and scrabbling fingers could move her. She felt the chill as the tube arched above the lock, and she refused to think about the black, cold emptiness on the other side of the layers of plastic and rubber and metal. The ring grew even tighter, until she thought she might be stopped, but then, as she wiggled one shoulder and then the other past the most constricted part, she found there was room again. There was still no light, and the sound of her breathing filled her ears almost enough to shut out the gentle scrabbling of the crawler coming behind her. At least she was moving. She was gaining. She held her breath for a moment to listen. She was sure the sound of the crawler had diminished behind her.

It was then that she felt the slight movement, as if an infinitesimal breeze had touched her cheek. She froze for several heartbeats, holding her breath, trying to determine what it was. The sound of the crawler grew louder again as she paused.

The darkness seemed to accentuate the sensation, so subtle she could have imagined it. It was more a feeling than a fact. It was a bit like when she could feel the
North America
preparing to brake, a faint suggestion of something changing, something happening. It was subtle. But it was real.

It shouldn’t be there, but she had no doubt, as she began wriggling forward again, that she had felt it.

The crawler should, too. It should stop, and set up an alarm.

It didn’t. The damn thing really did need redesigning.

Gasping for air, praying she could reach the opening before the crawler did, she drove herself harder. For what seemed interminable moments, there was nothing in Isabet’s world but her own rasping breaths and the mechanical click and slither behind her. She wriggled, and wriggled, and wriggled, until she thought the skin of her hands and shoulders and knees must be raw. She peered forward, trying to see the glimmer of light that would mean she had reached the panel, and could escape this confining tube.

And face Tie Dye again. But there was something more important happening now, more at risk than just her problems with Tie Dye. She had a leak to report.

She sucked in a shocked breath when her hand struck a smooth surface and it suddenly glowed. She had found the instrument panel. She could see that immediately. It was mounted on the inside of the door that was her only means of escape. Tie Dye had shut her into this bloody tube, and she realized, as she struggled to push it open, that he must have secured the clamps on the exit, too.

He meant her to die in here. She knew he was angry, and mean, but
murder
? How did he expect to get away with it?

She couldn’t give up now. There had to be a way to open the panel from inside, to release the clamps. The design couldn’t be
that
bad. She tried to think, but the crawler was coming up behind her, giving her no time.

She scrabbled with her fingers, and the touch screens came awake, one by one. She could barely lift her head enough to see them. She saw the temperature measurement, inside and out, she saw the maintenance records—stupid place for them—and the crawler’s interface. The screens faded when her fingers left them, and she frantically pushed with her palms, her fingertips, searching for the right one. If she could find it, if she could input a problem, a big problem, then the alarms would go. Someone would come. She could get out of here.

If the crawler hadn’t sliced her to ribbons first.

And then she found it. It looked familiar, measurements from pressure gauges set at regular intervals around the sealing tube. She found the alarm button at the bottom, the part of the screen she and the ring techs were never supposed to touch, and she pressed it as hard as she could with her thumb.

The screech of the alarm in the lock drowned out the approach of the crawler, but she knew it was coming. Her nerves burned with anticipation of its sharp metal blades cutting into her. She forced herself to focus on finding the crawler’s command screen. She ran her hands desperately across the panel to keep the screens awake, to keep the blue glow alive so she could—

There it was. Upper right corner, with a convenient little graphic that looked exactly like the grasshopper that had first come to her mind when she saw it. Finally, a design that made sense! She stabbed at it with her finger, and it lit up, showing her the buttons. With a gasp, she turned off the crawler. The sudden cessation of its movement, the end of the threat, left her weak and trembling.

She lay still in the tube for another half-minute, waiting for the pounding of her heart to slow. The glow of the screens on the instrument panel faded, one by one, until she was in complete darkness again. She listened to the alarm shrilling outside, imagining the running feet, the terror that alarm must strike into every heart aboard
Starhold
and the
North America
.

When the panel burst open, she found herself staring straight into Link’s eyes. His pupils swelled with shock at the sight of her. She said swiftly, “I know this is weird. I’ll explain everything in a minute, but first, there’s a leak in the sealing tube—not fatal now, but it’s going to get worse.
Starhold
needs to separate from
North America
, and right away.”

She was still in Link’s arms, her toes not yet on the floor, when Tie Dye came charging back into the lock, three other engineers hard on his heels. His face flamed at the sight of Isabet being extracted from the sealing tube. He shouted, “What were you doing in there? You’re going on report!”

Link, as if Tie Dye hadn’t said a word, set Isabet firmly on her feet, then turned her away from the crowd of engineers and technicians converging on the lock to begin the emergency disengage process. Tie Dye, nearly choking with fury, had an emergency protocol he had to follow. He was getting orders, and he was too busy obeying them to come after Isabet.