“How many bullets are left in that thing?”
“I’m sure it is empty now. Most of them are using knives and clubs. They didn’t expect a real fight, because . . .”
“Because they thought we’d all be zipped up in our storm shelters,” Dinah said, “like lambs to the slaughter.”
THE BIG BURN LASTED FOR THE BETTER PART OF AN HOUR. BY THE end of it, they’d consumed so much propellant and made Endurance so light that acceleration made the blood fall out of their heads and pool in their feet. Ivy piloted the ship lying flat on her back, lest she lose consciousness. The journey was punctuated by a few terrific bangs, and those who could stand to watch Endurance’s status readouts could observe various modules turning yellow, then red, then black as they succumbed to damage. Dinah watched through the eyes of several cameras as a ten-mile-long piece of the moon tumbled past them, overtaking them and zooming by just a few hundred meters to their starboard side. Nor was that the last such encounter; but with Doob acting as her wing man, calling out the biggest threats, and with Dinah making such use as she could of Parambulator, Ivy was able to steer them clear of the big stuff.
They had no way of knowing the progress of the combat aft. Zeke had spoken optimistically of their odds, but there was no telling how the damage they’d taken from bolides might have swung the course of the battle to one side or the other. Endurance’s automatic sealing off of damaged parts of the ship had now partitioned her into a number of separate zones between which movement was impossible.
Zero gee returned, meaning that the engines had shut off. They were now traveling as fast, on average, as the rest of the debris cloud. Dinah had only just adjusted to the steady acceleration of the big burn and now felt a wave of sickness come over her as the inner ear readjusted. Her eyes closed and she sank into a sort of catnap, floating loosely around the Hammerhead, thudding gently against a wall every so often when Ivy used the thrusters to avoid a rock.
Then she realized she’d been fully asleep for a time.
Part of her wanted to stay that way. But she knew that big things were happening, so she opened her eyes, half expecting to find herself alone, the last person alive.
Ivy was the only person awake, her face lit up by her screen. And for the first time in a long time, it looked the way it had used to when she’d been on the track of some fascinating science problem: alive, intent, fiercely joyful.
“Why’s it so quiet?” Dinah asked. For it seemed to her that it had been a long time since she had heard the crack of a bolide or sensed the thrust of one of Endurance’s engines.
“We’re in the shadow,” Ivy said. “A new Cone of Protection. C’mere.” She tossed her head.
Dinah came around behind and hooked her chin over her friend’s shoulder. The monitor had several windows open. Ivy enlarged one of them to fill most of the screen. A legend superimposed at the bottom identified it as AFT CAMERA.
The field of view was entirely filled by a close-up image of a huge asteroid.
Dinah was an asteroid miner. She had looked at many pictures of asteroids in her day. She had learned to recognize them by their shapes and their textures. She had no difficulty in identifying this one. “Cleft,” she said.
Ivy reached out and touched the screen. Red crosshairs appeared beneath her fingertip, which she dragged across the big rock’s surface until centered on a vast black crevasse that looked like it nearly split the asteroid in two: the canyon that had given this rock its name. She pulled her finger away, leaving the crosshairs in the middle of the cleft. “I was thinking there,” she said.
“How about a little below, where it gets wider?”
“I don’t think we want a wide place. Too much exposure.”
“Go there, then,” Dinah suggested, reaching out and dragging the crosshairs to a slightly different location. “Then we can snuggle into the narrow part once we’ve gotten inside.”
“You ladies enjoying yourselves?” Doob rasped.
“Not as much as you’re going to in about an hour,” Ivy said.
“I’ll try to hold out that long.”
THERE WAS NO PROBLEM GETTING INTO IT. IVY FLEW ENDURANCE into the great crevasse like a Piper Cub into the Grand Canyon. Within minutes the walls were reaching far above them. The bottom was still lost in shadow.