The Serrano Succession (71 page)

Suddenly his lamp threw back a bright sparkle . . . a rime of ice now outlined a line of pipe and shapes that should be a row of scrubbers. He could see past them to an irregular white shape bordering a jagged black line. Could that be the—

His boots slid on the greased icy decking again, as the strengthening current of escaping air and vapor whipped about him and sucked him toward the gap. He managed not to yelp and felt the jerk when his safety tether came up short.

"Don't worry, sir, we've got you."

He tried to think of something offhand and casual to say, but couldn't. That black crack . . . how big was it really? Not big enough for his whole body, surely . . . but an arm? A hand? "All that ice," he managed to say finally. "We're supposed to patch on a dry, clean surface."

"We can always torch it off," someone said.

"No! This vapor may be explosive," Barin said. "It's got hydraulic fluid in it, remember?"

"Well, then, we'll—" A fan of light brighter than the brightest day scythed into the compartment through the crack, giving structure and substance for a moment to the roil of vapor, striking blinding highlights off the ice.

"What was that?" yelped a frightened voice. Barin caught his breath, trying to think.

"The war's not over," the petty officer said. "The battle's still goin' on, and it's time we quit sightseeing."

He should have said that, but he was noticing the glow . . . it had not died instantly. It came again, another flash.

"Hitting the shields," the petty officer said. "Hope they hold." He sounded as unconcerned as if it made no difference either way. Maybe it didn't.

Barin reported in that they'd located a crack, and the margins were ice-covered.

"Ackman, you an' Wahn get to chippin' it off."

"Won't it just re-form?" Barin was glad someone else had asked that question. The petty officer grunted.

"Notice there's less fog? Most of the water vapor's out now, and the pressure and temp are both way down. Pretty soon it'll be clear enough to see."

It already was, Barin saw, when he flashed his lamp around. The fog was below waist level; he could shine his light all the way back to the portable airlock. Something glittered across the darkness, a fine wire . . . no . . . the hydraulic leak, still spitting a fine stream of the fluid. He reported where he thought it was coming from. Another scythe of light blazed through the crack. Barin ignored it.

They still had to fix the leak. Very carefully, in short moves each restrained by a tether, they moved toward the crack. Ackman and Wahn chipped the ice off the bulkhead. "Carefully," the petty officer warned them. "We don't want to damage it . . . lay your irons down just about horizontal to it." They chipped from the outside toward the crack; Barin and the others unrolled the patch material and cut off strips to use as supporting surfaces. As soon as they cleared ice from a strip, someone laid down a bead of adhesive and a strip of patch material.

No more ice formed on the upper surface of the patch cloth rimming the crack. Barin laid another bead of adhesive on the cloth rim, and then—turning the roll around—put the end of the roll flush with the bead at the bottom, and began unrolling upwards, sealing one side, while Averre sealed the other. The suction was less now, but still pulled the patch cloth tight against the crack. Someone—Barin couldn't tell who—pumped the foam gun and sprayed quickset foam on the cloth.

One leak down. Were there others? Barin checked the pressure in the compartment, and realized it was so low they'd have to wait quite a while to be sure. He reported in to the Damage Control Officer.

"We need you to do a check of the environmental system," he was told.

"We don't have any moles," Barin said.

"That's all right. You don't need to make it run, just report on what you find. I've got a checklist—I'm flashing it to your suit comp."

"Yes, sir." What he could see of the list in his heads-up display looked easy enough. Check each tank for leakage, check the lines, test for certain contaminants—Barin recognized some of these but not all.

"You'll report on channel six, that's the environmental officer this shift, but don't bother him unless you have to. They're trying to patch the remains of the starboard system upstream of you into the hard-chem backups."

This meant nothing to Barin, who had always considered Environmental the dullest of all specialities. Of course it was important—everyone liked to breathe—but it had none of the glamor of drives or weapons. He had passed the required courses by dint of dutiful memorization, and he'd put most of it out of his mind immediately after the exam.

The checklist was long and detailed. Every vat, chamber, pump, connection, pipe and tube . . . and the whole place was full of them. Barin looked at the time, at his own air supply, and calculated that they'd have to cycle out for air at least once. He wanted a margin of safety—he'd send half the team out when they had an hour's air left, then the other half. He set his suit alarm to remind him to check with the petty officer, and took his half-team up to the forward end of the compartment.

Here there was less ice on the deck. Barin flashed his headlamp around and wondered if it would be safe to rig lights—it would speed up their assessment. He clicked on his comunit, and heard a spirited argument about whether some unpronounceable compound could be used to do something equally hard to say to something he'd never heard of. When he clicked twice, the voices stopped, and an annoyed one said, "Yes?"

"Serrano with damage control in SE-14. Is it safe to rig lights in here?"

"What's your gas situation?"

He called Wahn over—Wahn had the chemscan—and had him read off the numbers.

"That sounds safe enough. No methane? No hydrogen sulfide? See any big leaks?"

"No methane, no hydrogen sulfide," Wahn said. "I'm not sure my chem-scan has all that stuff on the list . . ."

"No visible leaks since they cut off that hydraulic line," Barin said. "But we can't see much yet."

"All right then. Rig your lights, but watch your pressure. We're not airing up that compartment until it's secured, so any increase in pressure means you've got a leak of something coming in. Some of that stuff's nasty."

"Yes, sir." Barin clicked off, told O'Neil they were clear to rig lights, and should probably bring in something to sop up the flammable stuff on the floor.

A few minutes later, two of his team came back in, lugging strings of lights and a sack of the flocculant for the deck.

With lights strung as best they could, the damage was certainly more visible. Bulkhead material had spalled in a broad cone across the aft end of the compartment—there most of the tanks and vats were dented and one was holed, with a now-frozen mass of stringy stuff—filamentous algae? worms? Barin couldn't guess—firmly adhering to the side of the tank and the deck. Chunks of bulkhead like big flakes of obsidian lay where they'd fallen. He walked around, noting which tanks were damaged and how badly. When he got back to the forward bulkhead, he checked the pressure gauge. Seventy-eight. It was up, but very slightly.

"Wahn—what's our gas mix?"

"Oxygen's up a point, sir. But with this low pressure . . ."

Oxygen, Barin thought, was the least of his problems. He spotted the green O
lines, and started checking them. Oxygen was breathable; it wasn't going to poison anyone even if it was leaking, and at very low pressure and temperature it wasn't likely to support combustion, either.

"Anything else?"

"No, sir, nothing I can identify. But most of the stuff on the list you flashed me isn't on this chemscan's selector."

"It's not?" A tiny cold finger ran down his spine. "What have you got, then?"

"Well, what you mostly need—oxygen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen. But not all that special environmental stuff."

"Let's see." Barin took a look; there was oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, all at very low amounts. "What about broadscan, did you try that?"

"Yes, sir, but I don't know what all these little peaks are. None of 'em are red-marked."

So probably it was picking up traces of whatever had been in the breached vessels. Maybe some outgassing from the patch adhesive. He looked at the scan readout himself, but while whatever it was had a molecular weight of around 16, he didn't know what it might be. He tried to envision the periodic table, but most of it eluded him. Oxygen? No, that was atomic weight; the molecular weight was 32.

He looked around, and saw a tangle of green lines—the oxygen code—snaking around a series of long tanks. There was an obvious place to look for an oxygen leak. Even if you could breathe it, it still shouldn't be leaking out. He started at the nearest tank, and tested every connection with his squirt bottle. On the second, little bubbles rewarded him—sure enough, something was coming out, and the most likely thing coming out of a green-coded line was oxygen. He called up the checklist and protocol and found that he needed a special patch. Which pocket had he put it in? There. He peeled off the backing, glad that whoever made these things realized they'd have to be used by people in gloves—that long pull-tag helped.

He looked around again to see where his team was. O'Neil and his group were down at the most-damaged aft end; the rest were scattered up and down the compartment, checking every bit of tubing for leaks.

That unknown peak on the readout bothered him. He called the Environmental Officer again.

"Sir, we've got a peak our chemscan doesn't identify. Something with a molecular weight of sixteen—" He flashed the readout to the EO.

"What do you mean your chemscan doesn't—
sixteen
? Lieutenant, didn't I tell you to look out for methane? What's the readout?"

Barin went cold. Methane. That was the one that blew up when it contacted free oxygen . . ." Sir, we don't have a readout for it on our machine."

"Oh my god . . . you don't have an Environmental chemscan. Lieutenant, get your people out now. You're sitting on a bomb." He'd figured that out; terror and guilt almost strangled him. He pushed them down. Later. Right now he had to get his people to safety. "Wait—tell them to move
slowly
. If they run through a pool of the stuff, and mix it, that's when it'll blow. Turn off those lights you rigged. Can you vent to vacuum?"

"We just—" Barin bit that off, switched channels, and called his team. "Emergency—" Heads turned toward him. "We have a potentially explosive gas mix. Don't run—we don't want to move the stuff around more than we have to. Whoever's closest to the lock, douse the lights." The lock. The portable airlock . . . would it hold pressure if there was an explosion? He switched back to the EO. "Sir, we accessed SE-14 through a portable airlock; if this compartment goes, it may not hold."

"I've already alerted them, Lieutenant. Get your people out. Vent to the vacuum if you can."

Could he? If they took the patch off . . . at least it wouldn't be an explosion in a closed space. "We could try to take the patch off—" He hoped the EO would say it was impossible, not worth the risk.

"Do it," the EO said. "If there's an explosion in that compartment we could lose the whole ship—"

And it would be his fault, because he hadn't checked to see that they had a chemscan programmed for Environmental. Barin shivered, anticipating what the captain would say, or his grandmother. Again he pushed it aside. No time.

He switched back to the team channel. Who was nearest? Telleen and O'Neil.

"Petty Officer O'Neil—" He saw, down the compartment, O'Neil turn towards him. "We need to vent this compartment immediately to vacuum. The EO has authorized us to tear down that patch. You four—" He couldn't think of their names, but they were closest to the airlock. "There by the airlock. Get out now. Has anyone identified a methane line leak?"

The EO's voice came in on his other channel. "If it's from a tank, it'll be in the outboard array, about a third of the way aft in that chamber; if it's a line, it could be anywhere."

Barin glanced over and saw Pivot Ghormley standing approximately in that location, about seven meters away. "What've you got, Ghormley?"

"Dent in the fermentation chamber, sir. There's a . . . a kind of crack in this little pipe here from some sort of collection tank—I could seal it—"

"Too late," the EO said. "You're probably standing in a pool of methane—if you stir it up . . ."

"Ghormley, stay where you are. Do not move," Barin said. Then to the EO, "I'm standing by the photosynthesis chamber. And there's a crack in the oxygen line." He looked down, and at that moment someone cut the lights.

"Lieutenant?" That was O'Neil.

"I'm standing in the oxygen," Barin said. "If I don't kick it around, this explosion may not happen. You get that patch torn down. Everybody who's not with you—except Ghormley and me—get out, but don't run." He could see their headlamps moving; he could see them cycling through. Surely they'd be safer in the corridor; surely someone would get them through the blast doors to the other side of the ship. He found himself counting the disappearing lights. One safe. Two. Then a pause, and, three, four . . .