The Elluvon Gift by Simon Lang

Author:Simon Lang [Lang, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Publisher: Avon
Published: 1975-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter VI

It was surprising how calm he felt, Dao Marik thought, how much in control of his remaining resources he found himself, compared to his sorry state of only a short while ago. True, the pain of his injuries still lanced him dully when he moved wrong, but Paige’s medication had pushed it off somewhere and was holding it, along with his mortal weariness, at bay. For the duration of the drugs, at least, he was integrated with himself again and glad of it He was going to need it

He was trapped in the tubes, and they were sending a MAX through, and there was no way out That much was absolute. But he did not intend to die yet, either, and his feeling about that was just about as absolute as a finite being could get. He made a quick mental inventory of his assets: the tool bag on his shoulder; the De Belfin device still clinging to the wall; the jutting Johanssen blocks covering the perforations in the ship’s skin; there was not much else in the featureless mirror curve of the tubes but Marik himself. My best asset, he thought wryly. It would have to be enough. He had no wish to become the first two-dimensional Priyam in the history of ComFleet He 100 began to trot painfully down the tubes, away from the direction of the danger. He had left the blocks where they were. Pulling them free would only have increased the size of the perforations in the weakened metal; but he had taken the De Belfin along. He could not have said why.

The air was thinner, and his head was getting light. Somewhere there was the muted rhythm of the pumps. His ears popped.

It would not be the MAX that would get him, he thought, not the friendly robot MAX, with its limited, cheerful, metallic vocabulary; it would be the tube case, the big, mindless hulk that fit the tubes with only a centimeter to spare all the way around. Not the MAX; the tube case.

The tube case that held the MAX was streamlined, whereas the MAX was specialized; it facilitated the MAX’s safe passage through the tubes, where the MAX’s many rims, handles, paks, and protuberances would have been irrevocably damaged. The tube case’s only claim to special devices was a narrow, rubber-edged bumper, some eight centimeters wide, that ran around the case’s slightly bulging leading end and was used as a stop in holding shunts, where air pressure might not have had time enough to build up a cushion.

His ears popped again as the pressure was lowered to pull the MAX through at its breakneck pace. It was going down fast; they are putting it through on a Red Blanket code, he thought, and his nose suddenly spouted blood. His ears sang. There was a whisper, a presence, and there came the MAX in its tube case, big, heavy, and fast. Marik tried to run then, to escape the juggernaut bearing down

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