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had to find the right control and throw it. The sisters were having a hard
time holding the wheel by backing against it and gripping it with their hands
as best they could, but the safety lights kept flashing yellow, green, yellow,
green.
There were only five buttons, and she pressed each of them in turn, but
nothing happened. She knew the sisters were weakening and that he would soon
get that door open. She kept pushing the buttons in desperation, one after the
other, hoping to catch the right button at the right point. It had to work. It
just had to.
The red light suddenly came on, and a bell sounded. Sabatini stopped for a
moment, and through the small glass window they could see his expression of
desperation. He pounded, swore, then renewed his attack on the lock, but now
Chu
Li was on the wheel. The whole procedure took perhaps forty seconds, yet it
seemed like years.
Since it was a pressurized burial, the outer door opened pretty quickly.
Deng Ho's body moved right out, but Sabatini grabbed hold of the wheel. His
body
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was horizontal, his hands gripped the wheel, his face was pressed in fear
against the viewing port, but the air was exhausted in an instant, and the
artificial gravity plunged him back down.
Chow Dai, exhausted, slumped to the floor, followed quickly by her sister. "Do
you think you can close that outside door?" she managed to ask.
"Not yet. Not for many minutes," Chu Li responded. "I do not know if someone
can live in space with no air, but I do know that no one can hold his breath
for more than five minutes. We will give it ten." She sank down, also
exhausted.
Her arms and shoulder muscles ached, and she felt as if she'd sprained both
wrists.
Still, it had been worth it. That one moment of stark terror on Sabatini's
face was payment for much inflicted misery, brutality, and indignity. Deng
Ho's gesture had not been in vain.
Chow Dai crawled over and gave Chu Li a kiss. "Welcome back," she said.
"Not for long, but I do not regret it. We have killed him, and the ship will
know it. The gas should come at any moment."
Chow Dai looked disappointed. "I had forgotten about that. I suppose that was
why he was so confident. Foreign devils have no idea of what honor is. Still,
it would have been nice to have won completely."
Chow Mai listened, thinking. "It would seem to me that if this gas was coming,
it would have come by now. Either it is not going to come or he is not dead."
Chu Li felt a new shot of energy and stood up. "You are right." She looked
through the air lock window and saw the interior, still lighted. She could not
see the area right by the door, but there was no sign of anyone or anything in
the air lock, and the outer door was definitely open, the alarm bell still
ringing. There was certainly no air in there, and she knew that space had to
be very cold, yet there was something nagging at her brain, troubling her.
Gravity. They had weight here, even if they felt lighter than back home. The
whole section had gravity, including the air lock. Sabatini clearly had not
been sucked out with the air, although it had been close. Why was there now no
body slumped down, hands frozen to the wheel in a death grip?
The ship had been elaborately and illegally modified, and there were all sorts
of compartments and gadgets built into the walls. Might there not also be some
sort of emergency compartment in the air lock? She couldn't see how a body
could stand a vacuum, even for a few moments, but what if it could? There was
better than two meters of air lock. Something had to be inside those thick
walls.
"We must find something to jam this door. Before we close the outer door,
which will automatically flood the compartment with air, we must jam the wheel
so it cannot be opened from the outside. He might be alive in some rescue
compartment there. We must examine as much of the ship as we can to make sure
such a one cannot otherwise reenter the ship."
If he was in there someplace, he'd be in a small, probably dark compartment
much like a closet, with some sort of breathing device but little in the way
of food and water for more than a day and certainly no bathroom. The only way
to make certain, though, was to risk keeping the outer door open, jam the
inner, and somehow make contact with the ship's pilot.
She reached down and picked up his headset. She had not brought honor, glory,
or dignity to herself by serving him, but she had always been observant. Now
she thought she could imitate his odd, animal-like growls that commanded some
of the locks. The headset had been bent out of shape, but it did not appear
damaged.
She put it on, although it was too large for her head, and spoke one of the
commands in his language that she knew overrode the electronics room lock.
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