Chapter 9

After informing Cory, Ramon sailed down the corridor toward the East Wing, leaving the other two men behind to help Cory along. Despite his large build, Ramon was surprisingly agile, and able to make use of the corridor's numerous handholds like a gymnast, gaining additional speed as he passed each one. A well-practiced technique allowed him to blindly swing around corners with little loss of momentum, provided he didn't collide with anyone coming from the other direction.

When he arrived outside the shuttlebay, he found a small knot of men in front of a locked door under flashing red lights. Two were fumbling with the locking mechanism while one peered through a small window into the bay and offered unsolicited commentary on every detail he could make out through the milky glass.

"Hey, it's Ramon," one man said, and they all cleared away from the door. "We can't get it open. It's codelocked, I guess. This guy's pretty sharp if he can figure out how to lock us out of our own system."

"He can't lock me out," Ramon said. "Not when I've got the master override for the whole system." He extracted a small tool from a pouch in his belt and pried open an access panel next to the bay door. Then he reached inside the cavity and pulled out a numeric keypad tethered by a thin, coiled cable. One of the dockmen moved in closer to watch and Ramon instinctively guarded his actions.

"Give me a break, Ramon. I'm just trying to see what you're doing. If we're still alive in an hour, you can change the stinking codes."

"I wouldn't trust you hoodlums with the code to the bathroom," Ramon said in his usual, unruffled tone. "Get over there and help them open the door when I tell you." He submitted the first code and they heard the outer bay doors slam shut and the bay start to pressurize. The flashing red lights switched to a steady yellow, and the pressure gauge on the wall began to rise quickly.

"Hey, Ramon," came a voice from behind. "I thought you couldn't fly the shuttle away from the asteroid."

"You can't."

"Then how come this guy's headed out into space with it?"

Ramon kept his eyes trained on the pressure gauge, which had risen to 20%. "I don't know. Unless you can defeat the autopilot, it might as well be a ski lift between here and the surface."

"Could you do it?"

"Yeah, sure, but that's 'cause I installed the system. If this guy could break the system in under an hour, then there's nothing he can't do."

When the pressure reached 70%, Ramon said "good enough" and entered the code to unlock the inner door. Half a dozen backs strained and soon the air began to howl as the seal on the door broke free. They swung the door wide open and a couple of men who lost their grips were swiftly sucked into the bay. Within half a minute the gale had died down to a steady breeze.

Cory rounded the corner unassisted, obviously marshalling his strength in front of the crew. The two men with him followed closely, and were plainly keeping a very close eye on him. The men around the door gaped at his condition and immediately looked to Ramon, whose admonitory expression checked the questions Cory had no time to answer.

"What have you found out, Ramon?" he asked as he glided up to the bay door. A couple of men, worried that he couldn't stop himself, lurched out and grasped him before he struck the door. They brought him to a stop and released him with a perfunctory air, as if they routinely performed this service for everyone.

Ramon gave them a nearly imperceptible nod of acknowledgement for assisting Cory so tactfully and then turned to him. "We just now got the door open. We had to pressurize the bay 'cause the outer doors were left wide open. Never seen that before-they're supposed to shut automatically. Just like the shuttle's supposed to only fly down to the surface."

"So it's true?"

"They all say so, but we'll have to take a look for ourselves just to make sure. Anything's possible, but how he pulled it off..."

Ramon and Cory followed the others who had already begun filing through the doorway.

"What the heck happened in here?" Ramon asked himself out loud. "Looks like everything's gone. Where's all the stuff that was in here?" He surveyed the contents of the bay-or what was left-as he approached its center. Cory followed.

"Looks like everything that wasn't tied down is gone, Ramon. And most of what was. You don't suppose..."

"What would he need with all that stuff?" asked a nearby crewmember. "A few tools maybe, but not everything. Not everything in the whole bay. Shoot, how could he have fit it all inside the shuttle? It ain't that big."

"That ain't what Cory's getting at," Ramon said. "He didn't take it with him."

"Then where is it?" the other man asked.

Ramon pointed to the outer bay doors. "Out there."

Everyone within earshot turned to face the outer doors. Several approached them and peered out through the portholes on the outer wall.

"I think you're right, Cory," Ramon said. "He must have opened the doors while the bay was still pressurized."

"Why would he do that?"

Ramon thought for a moment, not searching for an answer as much as thinking through what he already suspected. "I don't know how he managed to shut off the automated system, but it's possible he had to do everything by hand, including the launch. That's a lot of details. He could have just forgot to depressurize."

Cory nodded. "Thank you, Ramon. That's a reasonable answer-a safe answer. Now let's hear the theory I know you're holding back on."

Despite his best effort, Ramon couldn't suppress a self-conscious grin. "Okay, he could have also done it on purpose."

"Again, I ask why."

"There's a lot of air pressure in a bay like this, especially compared to a perfect vacuum. He could have used that to his advantage and got a good kick out of it by opening the doors quick and riding the current out."

"Like a wine cork?" somebody asked.

"Well, sort of. A cork's got a seal around it, so it's got all the pressure inside pushing on it. Once it's gone, though, the air behind it is still moving fast enough to carry stuff with it. I ain't saying he did it for sure, but it's possible. He could have got some extra speed and, if he timed it right, headed out that door the same direction as the transport."

Cory's expression turned grave. "If he also burned the fuel onboard, could he catch up with the transport?"

Ramon shrugged. "I don't know. It's impossible to tell. Nobody ever thought of anything like this when we were looking for escape plans. It depends on a dozen variables a grease monkey like me couldn't understand. Maybe he could. Maybe he'd need ten times more thrust, or a hundred or a thousand. I don't got a clue."

"Then tell me what we can do to stop him."

Ramon contemplated the problem briefly and then went to the shuttle control panel on the far end of the bay. Cory moved much more slowly and, after declining assistance from a couple of the men, joined Ramon at the console.

"As far as I can tell, the system thinks the autopilot program is still active, so he must have done something to the shuttle-not the main system. That's good. Means we still might have some control."

"How much?"

Ramon shrugged. "If we're lucky, we maybe could lock the controls. If we're really lucky, we might be able to give it a return to base command that'll bring it back. It all depends on how good he overrode the system. I figure our best shot is to try to reset the system and hope the autopilot kicks back in. If I remember right, it'll be kind of obvious what's happening, though, and he could block the command. If we try it when he's looking at the panel, he'll probably know what we're doing."

"Then we've got to make sure he's not looking. We need to distract him. When we met before, he seemed to enjoy our little exchange. He might be in the mood to gloat right now. Can we hail the shuttle and give him the opportunity?"

Ramon nodded. "We can probably do better than that. The shuttle's got a video surveillance system for monitoring passengers. We can probably open a video link right now, whether he likes it or not."

"Great. I'm sure I can get his attention and keep it. I'm the last person he would expect to see alive right now. How long do I need to distract him?"

"I don't know. Ten seconds, maybe. A few lights will flash and a system status message will show up on the panel. The camera and screen are mounted pretty high above the panel, just above the windshield, so he's got to look up high to see you."

"Okay, Ramon. Do you need any more time, or are you ready?"

"I'm ready. All I've got to do is push a button. Then it'll work or it won't. If it don't work, then you'd better be a pretty good talker."

Cory gave him a sober nod and positioned himself in front of the monitor, holding onto the back of a console seat for support. He took a deep breath, squared his sagging shoulders as best he could, and said, "now."

The monitor turned solid white for an instant and then displayed a fisheye view of the shuttle compartment taken from a camera facing the rear wall. The warped ceiling was visible along the top edge of the screen, as were the walls on the left and right edges. The upper half contained half a dozen rows of empty seats, while the lower half showed the top of someone's head overlooking the instrument panel below the camera. But his hair was black instead of the expected blond. Cory looked to Ramon in amazement. "That's not him."

Cory drew closer to the monitor and barked, "Identify yourself!"

The figure jumped and almost came out of his chair. A few seconds later the startled face of Tyrell Richards looked up.

Cory stared incredulously and Ramon completely forgot about the reset button. Each man stared at his respective monitor for a short eternity before Cory finally spoke.

"Tyrell? Tyrell, what on earth are you doing on that shuttle?"

Tyrell caught his breath as his wide, panicked eyes slowly narrowed into angry resolve. In a mere few seconds the transformation was complete and he shot back angrily.

"I'm saving my skin, that's what I'm doing. Saving my own self 'cause you all give up a long time ago. If you want to give up, that's your own business, but nobody's gonna give up for me. Nobody."

"I don't understand, Tyrell. This is a foolish move. You shouldn't have done this on your own without telling anybody."

"You saying I shoulda asked first? Just so you coulda said no? I been asking you for a week, Cory. Asking about this and asking about that. Coming up with plans that you never had time for 'cause you were too busy talking to other people. No matter what I said, you had a reason why it wouldn't work. It was no, no, no, like I was some kind of kid that didn't know up from down.

"Well, I ain't a dumb kid, Cory. I studied Ramon's books 'bout the shuttle for days. At first 'cause I wanted to help, but I got sick and tired of coming to you big guys--you smart guys--and being told why none of my ideas was any good. You and Ramon and Herman and all those guys back on earth--you all done give up on the rest of us here. But I wasn't raised to give up. Never. So if you want to give up, that's your business, but I had to do what I could to save myself.

"And I did it Cory. I did it. You didn't want my ideas, so I used 'em for myself. You didn't need the shuttle no more, so I took it. I only used what you threw away and saved my own self, so I guess I ain't so dumb after all, huh? Now who's the dumb one: me here or you there?"

Cory stared blankly for a moment and then proceeded in an earnest tone. "No, Tyrell, you're not dumb. You've never been dumb. I've always known you to be resourceful, and if I hadn't had the weight of 80 lives on my shoulders as I faced a deadline-in the truest sense of the word-I think I would have done a better job of listening. With so much at stake and so little time, I had to make quick decisions and trust my instincts. There wasn't time for much else."

Cory motioned to Ramon that the plan to recapture the shuttle was no longer on. Then he took a quick look around him to confirm that the other men were out of earshot.

"Tyrell, what you do now is up to you. I release you from your responsibilities here. You're right. You took what no one else wanted and found a way to carve your own path. Whether it will work or not, I can't say, but I don't fault you for trying. I respect your restless ingenuity. I couldn't say this in front of everyone else, but you know that you and Ramon are different from the others. I've always treated you differently because I saw more in you. I worked you harder and gave you more responsibilities because I trusted you. I also confided in you two and looked on you like family. You, in particular, I thought of as a son. I thought you understood that, but maybe I didn't make it as clear as I should have. I've always cared about you, Tyrell, and I hope you believe me when I say that I've never thought of you as dumb."

As Cory spoke, Tyrell's anger, which had a moment before crashed down like mighty breakers, gave way like a retreating tide. Weightless tears pooled up in his eyes in a peculiar way that is seldom seen in a spacedock of working men.

"Cory, I'm sorry. Not for what I did, 'cause I felt I had to, but for what I said. You've always been good to me, real good. I know that. I said some things to Ramon before about you, but I didn't mean it. I was just talking trash 'cause I was mad. But I know you always looked out for me, always took care of me.

"I guess when all this came down, I freaked out. All I could think about was my mother. Well, that ain't really true, 'cause I was thinking about myself, too. All my ideas was probably too small to do you any good 'cause I was thinking of how to save myself, and you were looking for ways to save all of us."

At this point he broke into heavy sobs. "I'm sorry Cory. Maybe I'm just like a rat jumping off a sinking ship, but it's in my nature. I was raised to survive, not to be noble. Even with things the way they are, you and Ramon got this sense of duty to do what's right. I hope you can catch that guy. I hope you can keep being what you're s'posed to be, even until..."

"The end comes for everyone, Tyrell, for some sooner and for some later. Don't count us out just yet, though. We'll hold onto hope until the last minute. But if death does come, it will find us to be the same men as we have always been in life. As for you, you succeeded where everyone else failed to find a way."

For several minutes more Cory and Tyrell talked. At last Ramon joined in as they said their good-byes. He gave Tyrell a final "vaya con Dios" and closed the channel.

"Tell me," Cory said, "does he have a chance?"

"Slim to none, my friend. Slim to none."

Across the bay, the men were silently gathered in front of the window. Ramon and Cory joined them, and one of the men turned to speak.

"That's it," he said in a hushed tone, pointing out the window ominously. "They said once we could see it, there'd be less than an hour left."

Ramon and Cory gazed out though the portholes solemnly. Within the placid field of gray stars hung a hazy yellow blur declaring its unwelcome presence.