2312

Swan herself was doing fairly well with crawling, though her bones ached. She knew once she got to a spacesuit and began to get into it, its AI would take over and jeeves the thing onto her. It would only be necessary to flex one’s shoulders and arms, like someone getting into coat sleeves, as the suit conformed itself onto one and sealed itself. Everyone had suited up under high g at least a few times in emergency drills, so now there was a sense that when they got to the changing room, things would be all right.

But Wahram was not having as much success moving as Swan. He might have been 50 or even 75 percent again as heavy as her, and now that was telling. He was shimmying along like a wounded walrus, but it was slow going, and she could see he was getting tired. Happily Inspector Genette passed them, at work with two other smalls hauling a big tall, who looked like Michelangelo’s David but could only just keep his head off the ground as they slid him along. “I’ll be back,” Genette said to Wahram and Swan, and off they went, shouting in their high voices at each other. And in a few more minutes, all three of them returned. Genette stumped about them, cheerfully giving orders, and they dragged Wahram to a wall with a railing. Once there Wahram was able to pull himself along on his knees, red-faced and gasping. He fixed Genette with a bulbous eye. “Thank you, I can proceed now. Please go help someone who can’t. I’m happy to see how the laws of proportion help you here, my friend.”

The inspector paused briefly to mime a stalwart boxer’s stance. “Every small takes up the call! None never yet died by natural cause!” Then, more relaxed: “I’ll see you soon in the lock, I think we’ve almost got everybody there.”

In the changing room next to the lock there was a sense of hurry but not panic-not quite. It was true that almost everyone was lying on the floor or crawling around except for the smalls helping them, and this was a shocking sight, a clear sign of an emergency. But the suits were kept in floor lockers, perhaps for this very reason, and Swan opened a locker and hauled herself onto the bench next to it and shoved into her suit as fast as she could, so fast that it squeaked a little in complaint. When she had it on and it declared all secure, she crawled along the floor to help Wahram into his suit, and then to help other people who needed it. Some were really struggling, clearly hurting. It would be a huge relief to these people to throw them overboard. Some of them should not have been in plus-one g for any length of time, it appeared. Swan was afraid there would be strokes and heart attacks, and a momentary image of Alex came to her, and she tried to take heart from it; Alex would have been great here, calm and encouraging, enjoying herself. Some of these people might be complacent spacers and out of shape, and might have brought this on themselves, but in any case there they were, struggling, groaning, sometimes even crying out. Some were trying to get out of their clothes before getting into the suits, and they were having more trouble getting their clothes off than getting their compliant suits on. One wombman, nearly spherical in torso, had picked a suit too small, so that Swan had to help him get out of it (it was persistent) and pick a new one.

Gradually there grew a smell of fear in the sweated air. Swan crawled back over to Wahram, ignoring her knees’ complaints. He was in a suit that was too big for him, but its display said it was secure. Their helmets’ common band was full of chatter, and she held up fingers before his faceplate-three, then four, then five-and switched to that band, and there he was, humming to himself.

“Your suit is too big,” she said.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I like them this way, and a lot of these go unused, I’ve found.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s safest to be fitted properly.”

He ignored that and began helping someone on the other side of him. Swan switched to the common band, where someone was saying, “So we’re jumping out just because this ship’s AI says we have to? Does that strike anyone else as odd? Are we sure it’s not some kind of mutiny? They had better have good insurance.”

This was answered ten different ways at once, and Swan clicked from the common band back to 345. “Do you want to go out together?”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course. We have to hold hands.”

She liked that. “Do you want to go sooner or later?”

“Later, please. I feel like I should help people.”

“Can you move around well enough to help?”

“I think so.”