“It won’t help you,” Clock said. “We’re still here, and there’s nothing you can do to us that won’t hurt yourselves at the same time. So forget about depressurisation, or executing high-geeload thrust patterns. They won’t work. The problem you had to deal with five minutes ago hasn’t gone away.”
“The only difference,” Mr. Pink said, “is that you just burned a lot of goodwill.”
“You were about to rip her head open to get at her memories,” Xavier said. “If that’s your idea of goodwill, you can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.”
Mr. Pink’s half-assembled trawl was floating through the cabin. He had let go of it during the escape.
“You wouldn’t have learned anything anyway,” Antoinette said, “because I don’t know what Clavain was going to do. Maybe I’m not putting that in sufficiently simple terms for you.”
“Get the trawl, Mr. Pink,” Remontoire said. The pig glared at him until Clock added, with distinct overemphasis, “Please, Mr. Pink.”
“Yes, Mr. Clock,” the pig said, with the same snide undertone.
The pig fumbled at his webbing. He was almost out of it when the ship surged forward. The trawl was the only thing not tied down. It smashed against one of Storm Bird’s unyielding walls, breaking into half a dozen glittering pieces.
Xavier couldn’t have programmed that in, could he? Antoinette wondered.
“Clever,” Clock said. “But not clever enough. Now we’ll have to get it out of you via some other means, won’t we?”
The ship was under constant steady thrust now. Still Antoinette heard nothing, and that started her worrying. Chemical rockets were noisy: they transmitted their sound right through the framework of the hull even though the ship was in vacuum. Ion thrust was silent, but it couldn’t sustain this kind of acceleration. But the tokamak fusion motor was totally silent, suspended in a loom of magnetic fields.
They were on fusion thrust.
Holy shit . . .
There was a mandatory death sentence for using fusion motors within the Rust Belt. Even using nuclear rockets this close to a carousel would have brought heinous penalties; almost certainly she would never have flown in space again. But fusion thrust was an instrument of potential lethality. A misdirected fusion flame could sever a carousel in seconds . . .
“Xavier, if you can do anything about this, get us back on to chems immediately.”
“Sorry, Antoinette, but I figured this was for the best.”
“You did, did you?”
“Yes, and I’ll take the rap for it if it comes to that. But listen, we’re being held hostage here. That changes the rules. Right now we want the police to pay us a visit. All I’m doing is waving a flag.”
“That sounds great in theory, Xave, but . . .”
“No buts. It’ll work. They’ll see that I deliberately kept the flame away from habitations. Matter of fact, there’s even an SOS modulation buried in the pulse pattern, though it’s much too rapid for us to feel.”
“You think the cops’ll notice that?”
“No, but they’ll sure as hell be able to verify it afterwards, which is all that matters. They’ll see that this was a clear attempt at signalling for help.”
“I admire your optimism,” Clock said. “But it won’t come to a court of law. They’ll simply shoot you out of the sky for violating protocol. You’ll never have a chance to explain yourself.”
“He’s right,” Mr. Pink said. “You want to live, you’d better turn this ship around and scuttle back to Carousel New Copenhagen.”
“Back to square one? You’ve got to be joking.”
“It’s that or die, Mr. Liu.”
Xavier undid his seat restraints. “You two,” he said, pointing at the two visitors, “had better stay put. It’s for your own good.”
“What about me?” Antoinette said.
“Stay where you are—it’s safer. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She had no choice but to trust him. Only Xavier knew the details of the program he had loaded into Beast, and if she started moving around as well she might come to harm if the ship made another violent thrust change. There would be arguments later, she knew—she was not happy that he had installed this set of tricks without even telling her—but for now she had to admit that Xavier had the upper hand. Even if all it might gain them was a few minutes of breathing time.
Xavier was gone, off towards the flight deck.
She glared at Clock. “I liked Clavain a lot better than you, you know.”
“Beast?” Xavier whispered. “Better do it. They’ll have seen us by now, I’m pretty sure.”
Beast said nothing.
“It’s safe,” Xavier said, still whispering. “Antoinette’s staying downship with the two creeps. She’s not going anywhere soon.”
When the ship spoke to him, its voice was much lower and softer than it ever was when it addressed Antoinette. “I hope we did the right thing, Xavier.”
The ship rumbled as fusion thrust was smoothly supplanted by nuclear rockets. Xavier was pretty sure they were still within fifty kilometres of Carousel New Copenhagen, which meant even using nuclear rockets was in contravention of a list of rules as long as his arm, but he still wanted to attract some attention.
“I do too, Beast. Guess we’ll know soon enough.”
“I can depressurise, I think. Can you get Antoinette into a suit without the other two causing any trouble?”
“Not going to be easy. I’m already worried about leaving them alone down there. I don’t know how long it will be before they decide to risk moving around. I suppose if I could get them into one compartment, and her into another . . .”
“I might be able to selectively depressurise, yes. Never tried it before, though, so I don’t know if it’ll work first time.”
“Maybe it won’t come to that, if the Convention’s goons get to us first.”
“Whatever happens, there’s going to be trouble.”
Xavier read Beast’s tone of voice well enough. “Antoinette, you mean?”
“She might have some difficult questions for you to answer, Xavier.”
Xavier nodded grimly. It was the last thing he needed to be reminded about now, but the point was inarguable. “Clavain had his doubts about you, but had the good sense not to ask Antoinette what was going on.”
“Sooner or later she’s going to have to know. Jim never meant for this to be a secret her whole life.”
“But not today,” Xavier said. “Not here, not now. We’ve got enough to deal with for the moment.”
That was when something on the console caught his eye. It was on the three-dimensional radar plot: three icons daggering in from the direction of the carousel. They were moving quickly, on vectors that would bring them around Storm Bird in a pincer movement.