“—over here!"
“Shut up, Lamm."
“Horzaaa… !"
Voices screamed in his ear. He was running on carpet now, inside a broad corridor; open doors were flapping, light fittings
on the ceiling
were vibrating. Suddenly a deluge of water swept across the corridor in front of him, twenty meters away, and
for a second he thought he was at
sea level, but knew he couldn’t be; when he ran over the place where the water had been
he could see and hear it frothing and gurgling down a
broad spiral stairwell, and only a few dribbles were falling from overhead.
The tugging of the slowly decelerating ship seemed less now, but the
roar of noise was still all around him. He was weakening,
running in a daze, trying to keep his balance as the long corridor vibrated and twisted
around him. Now a rush of air was
flowing past him; some sheets of paper and plastic flapped past him like colored birds.
“—bastard bastard bastard—"
“Lamm—"
There was daylight ahead, through a glassed-over sun deck of broad windows. He jumped through some big-leaved plants growing
in large
pots and landed in a group of flimsy chairs set round a small table, demolishing them.
“—fucking stupid bast—"
“Lamm, shut up!" Kraiklyn’s voice broke in. “We can’t hear—"
The line of windows ahead went white, cracking like ice then bursting out; he dived through the space, to skid over the fragments
scattered
on the deck beyond. Behind him, the top and bottom of the shattered windows started to close slowly, like a huge
mouth.
“You bastard! You motherfu—"
“Dammit, change channels! Go to—"
He slipped on the shards of glass, almost falling.
Only Lamm’s voice sounded through his helmet now, filling his ears with oaths which were mostly drowned in the smothering
roar of the
endless wreck behind. He looked back, just for a second, to see Lamm throwing himself between the jaws of the
crumpling windows; he
careened over the deck, falling and rolling, then rising again, still holding his gun, as Horza looked
away. It was only at that point he realized he
no longer had his own gun; he must have dropped it, but he couldn’t remember
where or when.
Horza was slowing down. He was fit and strong, but the abovestandard pull of Vavatch’s false gravity and the badly fitting
suit were taking
their toll.
He tried, as he ran in something like a trance, as his breath streamed back and forth through his wide-open mouth, to imagine
how close
they had been to the bows, for how long that immense weight of ship behind would be able to compress its front section
as its billion-ton mass
rammed into what must—if it had filled the cloud bank they had seen earlier—be a massive tabular iceberg.
As though in a dream, Horza could see the ship about him, still wrapped in clouds and mist but lit from above by the wash
of golden
sunlight. The towers and spires seemed unaffected, the whole vast structure still sliding forward toward the ice
as the kilometers of Megaship
behind them pressed forward with the vessel’s own titanic momentum. He ran by game courts, past
tents of billowing silver, through a pile of
musical instruments. Ahead there was a huge tiered wall of more decks, and above
him were bridges, swaying and thrashing as their bow-
ward supports, out of sight behind him, came closer to the advancing
wave of wreckage and were consumed. He saw the deck to one side
drop away into airy, hazy nothing. The deck under his feet
started to rise, slowly, but for fifteen meters or more in front of him; he was fighting his
way up a slope growing steeper
all the time. A suspension bridge to his left collapsed, wires flailing; it disappeared into the golden mist, the
noise of
its fall lost in the crushing din assaulting his ears. His feet started to slide on the tilt of deck. He fell, landed heavily
on his back and
turned, looking behind him.
Against a wall of pure white towering higher than the
Olmedreca
’s tallest spire, the Megaship was throwing itself to destruction in a froth of
debris and ice. It was like the biggest wave
in the universe, rendered in scrap metal, sculpted in grinding junk; and beyond and about it, over
and through, cascades of
flashing, glittering ice and snow swept down in great slow veils from the cliff of frozen water beyond. Horza stared at
it,
then started to slide down toward it as the deck tilted him. To his left a huge tower was collapsing slowly, bowing to the
breaking wave of
compacted wreckage like a slave before a master. Horza felt a scream start in his throat as he saw decks
and railings, walls and bulkheads
and frames he had only just run past start to crumple and smash and come toward him.
He rolled over sliding shards and skidding fragments to the buckling rail at the edge of the deck, grabbed at the rails, caught
them, heaved
with both arms, kicked with one foot, and threw himself over the side.
He fell only one deck, crashing into sloped metal, winding himself. He got to his feet as fast as he could, sucking air through
his mouth and
swallowing as he tried to get his lungs to work. The narrow deck he was on was also buckling, but the fold-point
was between him and the wall
of towering, grinding wreckage; he slipped and slid away from it down the sloping surface as
the deck behind him rose into a peak. Metal tore,
and girders crashed out of the deck above like broken bones through skin.
A set of steps faced him, leading to the deck he’d just jumped from,
but to an area that was still level. He scrambled up
to the level deck, which only then started to tip, canting away from the wave front of debris as
its front edge lifted, crumpling.
He ran down the increasing slope, water from shallow ornamental pools cascading around him. More steps: he hauled himself
toward the
next deck.
His chest and throat seemed filled with hot coals, his legs with molten lead, and all the time that awful, nightmarish pull
came from behind,
dragging him back toward the wreckage. He stumbled and gasped his way from the top of the steps past the
side of a broken, drained
swimming pool.
“Horza!" a voice yelled. “Is that you. Horza! It’s Mipp! Look up!"
Horza lifted his head. In the mist, thirty meters above him, was the
CAT
’s shuttle. He waved weakly at it, staggering as he did so. The
shuttle lowered itself through the mist ahead of him, its
rear doors opening, until it was hovering just over the next deck above.
“I’ve opened the doors! Jump in!" Mipp shouted. Horza tried to reply, but could produce no sound apart from a sort of rasping
wheeze; he
staggered on, feeling as though the bones in his legs had turned to jelly. The heavy suit bumped and crashed around
him, his feet slipped on
the broken glass which covered the thrumming deck under his boots. Yet more steps towered ahead,
leading to the deck where the shuttle
waited. “Hurry up, Horza! I can’t wait much longer!"
He threw himself at the steps, hauled himself up. The shuttle wavered in the air, swiveling, its open rear ramp pointing at
him, then away.
The steps beneath him shuddered; the noise around him roared, full of screams and crashes. Another voice was
shouting in his ears but he
couldn’t make out the words. He fell onto the upper deck, lunged forward for the shuttle ramp
a few meters away; he could see the seats and
lights inside, Lenipobra’s suited body slumped in one corner.
“I can’t wait! I’ve—" Mipp shouted above the scream of the wreckage and the other shouting voice. The shuttle started to rise.
Horza threw
himself at it.
His hands caught the lip of the ramp just as it rose level with his chest. He was hoisted from the deck, swinging under outstretched
arms
and looking forward under the shuttle’s fuselage belly as the craft forced its way up into the air.
“Horza! Horza! I’m sorry," Mipp sobbed.