“Because that whole ‘Tell James Holden I’m in control’ thing was weird on a lot of levels. I checked the vocal profile of the message coming off the Chetzemoka – well, actually Fred did. It wouldn’t have occurred to me. Anyway, the way she said James Holden in the first warning message about the bad bottle drivers and the way it was in this new one? Exactly the same. Fred thinks the new message may have been faked. Only then the way it got modified before it shut off… I’m seeing something here, Alex. But I don’t know what it is.”
This time Alex waited until he was sure Holden was done before he started talking. “We haven’t had any sign at all, but it seems to me that someone on the ship’s been trying to raise a flag. And this flying in circles bit makes it seem a lot less like a Trojan horse. Nothing to gain by doing it, other than make everyone inside feel powerfully like throwing up. Honestly, I don’t know what we’re looking at here either, Cap’n, and I don’t think we’re going to know until we get someone inside.”
Eight long seconds there and back again. “I’m just worried that if she is in there and the ship’s out of control, we’re going to be sitting out here dithering while she needs us. I can’t stand the idea that we’ve come this close, and now we’re going to lose her. I know it’s a little crazy, but I’m a little crazy right now. I keep thinking of her being smashed up against the wall by the spin, and me out here where I can’t do anything.”
“Yeah, thruster misfires don’t work like that,” Alex said. “You don’t get any sideways impulse unless the thruster’s actually going. After that, you’ve got a little spin station action pushing the folks behind the center of spin down and the folks forward of it up, but all that is gonna be in line with the thrust from the drive, so all you actually get is —”
“Alex!” Bobbie said. “We’ve got something.”
He twisted on his couch, then turned it to face her. Bobbie’s eyes were on the wall screen. A panel was there, opened to the view from the upper camera. The Chetzemoka was still in its mad spin, but something had come off, floating now across the clear, empty void, stars behind it like the glittering pupil of a vast eye. The eye of the storm. Bobbie tried to zoom in on it the same moment Alex did, and the system made a confused, upset chime, the focus fluctuating wildly before coming to rest. A figure in an EVA suit. There were no lights on the suit, and its back was turned to them, the intense sunlight making the gray material shine almost too brightly to make out details.
“Is she alive?” Alex said.
“She’s moving.”
“How long ago did she come out?”
“Not long,” Bobbie said. “Seconds.”
The figure in the EVA suit lifted her arms, crossing them over her head. The Belter signal for danger. Alex felt his heart speed up.
“Alex!” Holden said, from four seconds ago. “What’s going on?”
“Someone came out of the ship. Let me figure this out, and I’ll be back with a report,” Alex said, then cut the connection. On Bobbie’s screen, the figure had shifted to a time signal. Five minutes.
“What have we got?” Alex said.
“She’s making the same signs,” Bobbie said. “Here we go. ‘Danger. Do not approach. Explosion hazard.’ But then here’s ‘Low air,’ and ‘five’… shit, ‘four minutes.’ ”
“Is it her?” Alex said, knowing there wasn’t an answer for that. Even if the figure turned its face to them, Alex wasn’t certain between glare and the suit’s helmet if he’d have been able to identify Naomi. It was just a person in an EVA suit, running out of air and warning them over and over again that it was a trap.
But Alex thought that whoever it was, they sure moved like Naomi. And they’d both been calling the figure “she.” They might not know, but they were both pretty certain. The body of the Razorback felt suddenly claustrophobic. Like the appearance of Naomi right there where he could see her required more room to move. Enough space to reach her. Alex set the pinnace’s system to the diamond-bright suit and started it calculating.
“Where’s she going to go?” Bobbie asked.
“Looks like she’s set to drift across into the path of the ship again,” Alex said. “If it don’t hit her, maybe she gets past and the drive plume gets her.”
“Or we watch her suffocate?” Bobbie said.
“I can take the ship in,” Alex said.
“And crisp her decelerating?”
“Well… yeah.”
“Get your helmets on,” Bobbie yelled loud enough to carry into the back cabin. “I’m going in.”
“That suit’s got enough thrust to do a fifty-klick flip-and-burn in under four minutes?” Alex asked, but he was already sealing his suit as he said it.