10000 Light Years From Home Part 28

He flushed some oxy into the ventilators and kicked back to the bridge. Get some clean metabolite or die.

Who would give him air? Even if he could move Ragnarok, the company depots and franchises would be alerted. He might just as well signal Coronis and give himself up. Maybe Quine wouldn't bother to reach him and Topanga in time. Maybe better so. Wards. Wires, Topanga groaned. Gollem felt her temples. Hot as plasma, old ladies with a leg shortened shouldn't play war. He rummaged out biogens, marveling at the vials, ampoules, tabs, hyposprays. Popping who knew what to keep alive. Contraband she and Val had picked up in the old free days, her h.o.a.rd would stock a...

Wait a minute.

Medbase Themis.

He tuned up Ragnarok's board. The Themis woman was still calling, low and hoa.r.s.e. He cranked the antennae for the narrowest beam he could get.

"Medbase Themis, do you read?"

"Who are you? Who's there?" She was startled out of her code book.

"This is a s.p.a.cesweep mission. I have a casualty."

"Where-" The male voice took over.

"This is Chief Medic Kranz, s.p.a.cer. You can bring in your casualty but we have a rogue headed through our s.p.a.ce with a gravel cloud. If we can't get power to move the station in about thirty hours we'll be holed out. Can you help us?""You can have what I've got. Check coordinates." The woman choked up on the decimals. No use telling them he couldn't do them any good. The gee-sum unit he had in Ragnarok wouldn't nudge that base in time for Halley's comet. And Ragnarok's drive-if it worked it would be like trying to wipe your eye with a blowtorch. But their air could help him.

The drive. He bounced down the engineway, knowing the spring in his muscles was partly phage.

Only partly. A thousand times he had come this way, a thousand times torn himself away from temptation. Gleefully now he began to check out the circuits he had traced, restored the long-pulled fuses. There was a sealed hypergolic reserve for ignition. A stupefying conversion process, a plumber's nightmare of heat-exchangers and back-cycling. Crazy, wasteful, dangerous. Enough circuitry to wire the Belt. Unbelievable it had carried man to Saturn, more unbelievable it would work today.

He clanked the rod controls. No telling what had crystallized. The converter fuel chutes jarred out thirty years' acc.u.mulated dust. The ignition reserve was probably only designed for one emergency firing.

Would he be able to ignite again to brake? Learn as you go. One thing sure, when that venerable metal volcano burst to life every board from here to Coronis would be lit.

When he got back to the bridge Topanga was whispering.

"We left the haven hanging in the night-O thou steel cognizance whose leap commits-"

"Pray it leaps," he told her and began setting course, double-checking everything because of the phagemice running in the shadows. He wrapped Topanga's webs.

He started the ignition train.

The subsonic rumble that grew through Ragnarok filled him with terror and delight. He threw himself into the webs, wishing he had said something, counted down maybe. Blastoff. Go. The rumble bloomed into an oremill roar. Gees smashed down on him. Everything in the cabin started raining on the deck. The web gave sideways and the roar wound up in a scream that parted his brain and then dwindled into silence.

When he struggled back to the board he found the burn had cut right. Ragnarok was barreling toward Themis. He saw Topanga's eyes open.

"Where are we headed?" She sounded sane as soap.

"I'm taking you over to the next sector, Themis. We need metabolite, oxygen. The phagers ruined your regenerators.

"Themis?"

"There's a medbase there. They'll give us some."

Mistake.

"Oh, no-no!" She struggled up. "No, Golly! I won't go to a hospital-don't let them take me!"

"You're not going to a hospital, Topanga. You're going to stay right here in the ship while I go in for the cores. They'll never know about you. We'll be out of there in minutes."

No use.

"G.o.d hate you, Gollem." She made an effort to spit. "You're trying to trap me. I know you! Never let me free. You won't bury me here, Gollem. Rot in Moondome with your ugly cub-I'm going to Val!"

"Cool, s.p.a.cer, you're yawing." He got some tranks into her finally and went back to learning Ragnarok. The phage was getting strong now. When he looked up the holographs were watching him drive their ship. The old star heroes. Val Orlov, Fitz, Hannes, Mura, all the great ones. Sometimes only a grin behind a gold-washed headplate, a name on a suit beside some mad hunk of machine. Behind them, s.p.a.celost wildernesses lit by unknown moons. All alive, all so young. There was Topanga with her arm around that other s.p.a.cegirl, the dark Russian one who was still orbiting Io. They grinned past him, bright and living.

When they start talking, we've had it....He set the gyros to crank Ragnarok into what he hoped was att.i.tude for the retro burn. If he could trust the dials, there was enough ignition for braking and for one last burn to get out of there. But where would he go from Medbase? Into the sky with diamonds...

He heard himself humming and decided to lock the whole thing into autopilot. No matter what shape that computer was in it would be saner than he was.

Have you seen your mother, baby, standing in the shadows?...

When he began hearing the Stones he went down and threw out half the trays. The three remaining oxy tanks struck him as hilarious. He cracked one.

The oxy sobered him enough to check the weather signal. The Medbase woman was still trying to raise Themis Main. He resisted the impulse to enlighten her about the Companies and concentrated on the updated orbits of the Trojan rogues. He saw now what had Medbase sweating. The lead rogue would miss them by megamiles but it was ma.s.sive enough to have stirred up a lot of gravel. The small rogue behind was sweeping up a tail. The rock itself would go by far off-but that gravel cloud would rip their bubbles to shreds.

He had to get in there and out again fast.

He sniffed some more oxy and computed the rogue orbits on a worst-contingency basis. It looked O.K.-for him. His stomach flinched; even under phage it had an idea what it was going to be like when those medics found out they were wasted.

He saw Topanga grinning. The phage was doing her more good than the tranks.

"Not to worry, star girl. Golly won't let 'em get you."

"Air." She was trying to point to life-support, which had long since gone red.

"I know, s.p.a.cer. We're getting air at Medbase."

She gave him a strange un-Topanga smile. "Whatever you say, little Golly." Whispering hoa.r.s.ely, "I know-you've been beautiful-"

Her hand reached, burning. This he positively could not take. Too bad his music was gone.

"Give us verses as we go, star girl."

But she was too weak.

"Read me-"

Her scanner was full of it.

"In oil-rinsed circles of blind ecstasy." Hard to dig, until the strobing letters suddenly turned to music in his throat. "Man hears himself an engine in a cloud!" he chanted, convoyed by ghosts.

"-What marathons new-set among the stars!... The soul, by naphtha fledged into new reaches, already knows the closer clasp of Mars-"

...It was indeed fortunate, he discovered, that he had set the autopilot and stayed suited up.

His first clear impression of Medbase was a chimpanzee's big brown eyes staring into his under a flashprobe. He jerked away, found himself peeled and tied on a table. The funny feeling was the luxury of simulated gravity. The chimpanzee turned out to be a squat little type in medwhites, who presently freed him.

"I told you he wasn't a phager." It was the woman's voice.

Craning, Gollem saw she was no girl-girl and had a remarkable absence of chin. The chimpanzee eventually introduced himself as Chief Medic Kranz.

"What kind of ship is that?" the woman asked as he struggled into his suit.

"A derelict," he told them. "Phagerunners were using it. My teammate's stoned. All he needs is air."

"The power units," said Kranz. "I'll help you bring them over."

"No need for you to go in-I've got them ready to go. Just give me a couple of metabolite cores totake back to start the air cleaning."

Unsuspicious, Kranz motioned the woman to show the way to their stores. Gollem saw that their base was one big cheap bubble behind a hard-walled control module. The molly hadn't even seamed together under the film; a couple of pebbles would finish them. The ward had twenty-odd burn cases in coc.o.o.ns. Themis didn't bother much with burns.

An old s.p.a.cerat minus a lot of his original equipment came wambling over to open up. Gollem loaded as much metabolite as he could carry and headed for the lock. At the port the woman grabbed his arm.

"You will help us?" Her eyes were deep green. Gollem concentrated on her chin.

"Be right back." He cycled out.

Ragnarok was on a tether he didn't recall securing. He scrambled over, found the end fouled in the lock toggles. If there had been tumble-bye-bye.

When he got inside he heard Topanga's voice. He hustled up the shaft.

Once again he was too late.

While he'd been in the stores unsuspicious Chief Medic Kranz had suited up and beat him into Ragnarok.

"This is a very sick woman, s.p.a.cer," he informed Gollem.

"The legal owner of this derelict, doctor. I'm taking her to Coronis Base."

"I'm taking her into my ward right now. We have the facilities. Get those power units."

He could see Topanga's eyes close.

"She doesn't wish to be hospitalized."

"She's in no condition to decide that," Kranz snapped.

The metabolite was on board. Doctor Chimpanzee Kranz appeared to have elected himself a driveship ride to nowhere. Gollem began drifting toward the ignition panel, beside Topanga's web.

"I guess you're right, sir. I'll help you prepare her and we'll take her in."

But Kranz's little hand had a little stungun in it.

"The power units, s.p.a.cer." He waved Gollem toward the shaft.

There weren't any power units.

Gollem backed into the metabolite, watching for the stunner to waver. It didn't. There was only one chance left, if you could call it a chance.

"Topanga, this good doctor is going to take you into his hospital," he said loudly. "He wants you where he can take good care of you."

One of Topanga's eyelids wrinkled, sagged down again. An old, battered woman. No chance.

"Can you handle her, doctor?"

"Get that power now." Kranz snapped the safety off.

Gollem nodded sourly and started downshaft as slowly as he could. Kranz came over to watch him, efficiently out of reach. What now? Gollem couldn't reach the ignition circuits from here even if he knew how to short them.

Just as he turned around to look for something to fake a power cell it happened.

A whomp like an imploding mollybubble smacked into the shaft. Chief Medic Kranz sailed down in a slow cartwheel.

"Good girl!" Gollem yelled. "You got him!" He batted the stunner out of Kranz' limp glove and kicked upward. When his head cleared the shaft he found he was looking into the snout of Topanga's jolter."Get out of my ship," she rasped. "You lying suitlouse. And take your four-eyed, needle-sucking friend with you!"

"Topanga, it's me-it's Golly-"

"I know who you are," she said coldly. "You'll never trap me."

"Topanga!" he cried. A bolt went by his ear, rocking him.

"Out!" She was leaning down the shaft, squeezing on the jolter.

Gollem backed slowly down, collecting Kranz. The witch figure above him streamed biotape and bandages, the hair that once shone red standing up like white fire. She must be breathing pure phage, he thought.

Can't last long. All I have to do is go slow.

"Out!" She screamed. Then he saw she had Kranz's oxy tube clamped under one arm. This seemed to be his day for underestimating people.

"Topanga," he began to plead and had to dodge another jolt-bolt. She couldn't go on missing forever. He decided to haul Kranz out and cut back into the ship through the emergency port. He recalled seeing a welding torch in the medbase port rack.

He boosted Kranz along the tether and into the medbase lock. The woman was waiting on the other side. As the port opened he pushed Kranz at her and grabbed the welder. The chinless wonder learned fast-she flung herself on the welder and started to wrestle. There was solid woman-muscle under her whites, but he got a fist where her jaw should have been and threw himself back into the lock.

As it started to cycle he realized she had probably saved his life.

The outer lock had a viewport through which he could see Ragnarok's vents. The starfield behind them was dissolving.

He let out an inarticulate groan and slammed the reverse cycle to Jet himself back into Medbase. As soon as it cracked he bolted through, carrying the medics to the deck. The port behind him lit up like a solar flare.

They all stared at the silent torrent of flame pouring out of Ragnarok. Then she was moving, faster, faster yet. The jetstream swung and the port went black.

"It's burning! Get the foam!"

Kranz grabbed a sealant cannister and they raced to the edge of the hardwall area, where Ragnarok's exhaust had seared the bubble. When the burns were sealed the ship was a dwindling firetail among the stars.