Death Sentence (18 page)

"Yeah," said Jamie. He was quiet for a moment before he spoke again. "This is one hell of a mess," he announced.

"Yes it is," Hannah agreed. "But at least we have some time to work on sorting it out." She ran some numbers through her nav plot. "Even if we keep the thrust down to say, five gees, we have about--let's see--eighteen, nineteen hours before we have to start the burn. We can hold off a lot longer than that if we decide we can use a higher thrust."

"But the other minor issue is that we brought the
Adler
along for a reason. We need to get aboard to continue searching her as long as we can. And we can't fly her down to Metran."

"I know, I know."

"But can we do anything else? The basic flight plan was for both ships to ride in together, riding on the
Sholto
's engines until we were most of the way slowed down, then to cut loose the
Adler
and have her light her own engines and park herself in a Pluto-class orbit while the
Sholto
flew on to Metran. And then there's the trip back. The
Sholto
doesn't have enough power to do all the work by herself. The
Adler
will have to accelerate herself and match course with the
Sholto
. We need both ships at least reasonably healthy to do all that."

Hannah nodded. "Even if we weren't planning to search her, we still have to get back aboard the
Adler
to program her for autonomous flight and configure her to receive external flight commands."

"It was a mistake to bring her along," Jamie said.

"It's starting to look that way, at least for the moment," Hannah agreed. "But it was Kelly's call--and mistake--not ours. But what if, right now, we're five days away from whatever will touch off this war, and we save three days by having the
Adler
along for the ride? Even if it turns out that we both die and we lose both ships, but we stop a war--well, you and I won't enjoy it much, but could you really say Kelly made the wrong decision?"

Jamie didn't answer directly. "Okay, let's forget about the big picture just for the moment," he said. "The main thing is that we have to get aboard the
Adler
, repair her, continue searching her, and then program her for autoflight and external control and cut her loose. Right?"

"Right."

"Okay then. A good solid mechanical hard dock connection is one thing, but airtight is another. After what it's been through, the flexing and twisting and who knows what other forces, would you trust the docking tunnel to serve as an air lock?"

Hannah checked her instruments. "The tunnel was pressure-matched with the
Sholto
's cabin when we closed the hatches ninety minutes ago. It still is."

"That's something," Jamie said. "In fact, it's quite a lot. But
do
you want to trust it as an air lock?"

"No," Hannah said. "Not after what it's just been through. I think it's even possible that we won't be able to undock the two ships. The whole mechanism might be fouled up. We'll worry about that when it happens. In the meantime, I don't want to stress the system any more than we have already."

"And using the lower-deck air lock on our ship, doing a space walk right past that loose cable and the smashed window, then opening the
Adler
's lower-deck lock manually and cycling through it seems awfully risky, too. A lot could go wrong. I think we have to depressurize the
Sholto
so both ships are in vacuum, open the nose hatch, and then open the
Adler
's nose hatch and cross to the
Adler
that way."

"Agreed," said Hannah. "But there's one slight problem. Let me check something." She pushed back from the control panel and started taking advantage of zero gee. She spun herself around, grabbed the rope ladder, and pulled herself down toward the lower deck headfirst. She propelled herself across the lower deck toward one of the equipment lockers and opened it. She sighed wearily. "We're really going to have to talk to Gunther about improvising more brilliantly and making sure all the bases are covered when they're doing what no one has ever done before on the rush and without anyone in overall charge. His people didn't hang an extra suit here."

"What?" Jamie called down.

"Suit. Pressure suit. There's only one emergency pressure suit on this ship. There's another on the
Adler
, but that's not going to do us much good right now." She looked up at Jamie as he stared down at her from the upper deck. "Any suggestions?"

"I was the one who worked out what to do," said Jamie as he entered the lower-deck air lock, hauling in a stack of gear. "I still think I should be the one who goes over."

"This from the guy who almost lost his lunch when the ships starting tumbling and who is looking a little green after doing nothing more than floating from one deck to another in zero gee," said Hannah as she set down the stack of airscrubber canisters in the corner of the lock chamber. "Okay, air scrubbers, spare oxy, food, water. Comm system up, running, and patched into the loop with the suit radio."

"Check, check, check, check, and check on the supplies, and yes, the comm system is online. If I never get any practice in zero-gee operations, I'll never have a chance to adapt."

"Agreed," said Hannah. "But this isn't the time to practice--or the time to start acting like the big brave hairy man who has to do all the dangerous stuff. What if your stomach hits the eject button when you're in the suit, you've got the helmet on, and you're in vacuum?"

Jamie shrugged. "Then we probably both die," he conceded.

"Look, if we live through this, we can leave the grav system shut off for the whole ride back, and you can do all the practicing you want."

Jamie grinned. "I don't know if that's such a good idea. I'm not sure I want to have to spend the whole trip back cleaning up after myself."

"Well, don't expect
me
to do it," Hannah said with a laugh. "Look, I know it's not exactly an ego rush, but this is the way we
have
to do it if we want the best chances of both of us staying alive. You hunker down in the lower-deck air lock, while I use the suit and do the repair. For what it's worth,
I
wouldn't want to do what
you
have to do. I'm not that crazy about getting crammed in a box."

"Thanks for putting it that way." Jamie glanced around the inside of the
Sholto
's lower-deck air lock. "I feel a whole lot better about it now."

"Sorry," Hannah said. "I shouldn't have said it like that."

"It's okay," said Jamie. "But look me in the eye and tell me that you really think getting stuffed in the lower-deck air lock, because it's the only place that we can keep pressurized, seems heroic to you."

"No," said Hannah, without any attempt at joking or banter. "No, it doesn't."

"But being dead wouldn't feel much better," Jamie said ruefully. "So lock me in and go do your job."

"You get in there, and do yours, Mr. Tactical Planning Genius," she said. "We're going to need lots of options for maneuver-masking and rendezvous flight plans."

"Yes, Mom. I promise to stay in and do my homework."

"I'm not kidding, Jamie. We're going to need those options, and we aren't going to be able to work them out from scratch on the fly before we cut the
Adler
loose. The time when you're locked in here might be the only chance you'll have to work them out."

"And I will. I know. I know."

Hannah rubbed her eyes and sighed. "Well, if we both weren't on edge by now, there would be something wrong with us." She glanced around the tiny chamber. "Sorry it's so cold in here," she said. "But you'll be glad we cranked down the temp soon enough. Sooner or later, the lock chamber's going to start getting warm."

"I know," he said. "Believe me, I know. Good luck out there."

"And good luck in here," Hannah said. "I'll keep you posted over the suit radio."

Neither of them was eager for what came next, but both of them knew it had to happen. Hannah pulled herself forward, they shook hands awkwardly, and Hannah gave Jamie an affectionate cuff on the shoulder. Then she grabbed at handholds and pulled herself out of the air lock and into the
Sholto
's lower deck. She braced her feet on the deck and closed the air lock hatch while Jamie stayed where he was, silently watching her. Jamie knew beyond all doubt that the same thought was going through both their minds.

This could be the last time we see each other alive.

Things always took longer than planned. It was a half hour later before Hannah was sealed into her suit and the main cabin of the
Sholto
was in vacuum. She hauled her improvised pack of cobbled-together equipment and supplies behind her and made her way toward the nose hatch. She worked the controls to drop the pressure inside the hatch tunnel and waited while the scavenger pumps ran. For about the hundredth time in the last ten minutes, she resisted the temptation to give Jamie a status report on every trivial step of her progress.
Okay, I've pushed the depressurize tunnel button. Okay, the tunnel is depressurizing. Okay, the panel is showing vacuum in the tunnel. Okay, I'm opening the hatch. I've got the hatch open....

It might make her feel better to keep up the chatter, but she knew it would drive Jamie to distraction--and probably she'd start getting on her
own
nerves before too much time had passed. He could hear her breathing through the comm loop. That would be enough to let him know she was still more or less all right. Far better simply to keep him posted on the big items and otherwise leave him be.

The panel showed the tunnel in vacuum--and once again she resisted the temptation to report that thrilling news. She popped the hatch and moved on into the tunnel, hauling the gear behind her.

She paused in the tunnel to examine the join between the docking rings of the two ships, but she could spot no obvious flaws or damage. But, of course, the most crucial and complex parts of the docking system were hidden from view inside the tunnel walls. They wouldn't know for sure until they tried to undock the ships, and even then they wouldn't be absolutely sure they would be able to
re
dock without giving it a try. But that was so many problems down the pike that it wasn't even worth worrying about.

Time to open the hatch to the
Adler
. Hannah moved forward down the tunnel, worked the controls, and pushed the hatch open. She latched it open, but didn't bother sliding the stanchions that held the rope ladder back into place. In zero gee, it didn't much matter if there was an overhang between the top of the ladder and the lip of the hatch.

The power was still out on the
Adler
, and she planned to keep it that way until she had checked out as many systems as possible. She powered up her helmet lights and peered into the shafts of light and ever-shifting and looming shadows they revealed.

It was amazing how utterly foreign and mysterious, how
menacing
a perfectly familiar place could look, merely because it was in darkness. Except this place
was
menacing, in fact downright dangerous, after that cable had come smashing through the viewport. There could very easily be razor-sharp shards of viewport or other debris floating around--and her suit was a lightweight one-size-fits-nearly-all emergency job, not an armored hostile-environment unit.

She scanned for debris as best she could with the helmet lights but didn't spot anything. She used an oversized eyelet attached to her gear bag to secure it to a handhold, then opened the bag up. The first things she pulled out of it were two empty utility bags.

First things first. She made her way carefully down to the
Adler
's lower deck and starting going through the equipment lockers. She pulled out the
Adler
's emergency pressure suit and the breather masks and any other sort of gear that they might conceivably need two of in the next emergency. Better late than never. That equipment went into one bag. The other she filled with the
Adler
's patch kit and leak-repair supplies. They were going to need just about every bit of patching material from both ships if they were going to have a prayer of sealing the hole where the viewport panel used to be.