distorted with terror. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept seeing water rising, rushing through corridors....
"Yeah," I muttered to myself. "Wish I'd never seen that damned movie." Aldonza paused at a simple metal door labeled PRIVATE, with a key card reader to the side. She swiped a card that was hanging from a pull cord at her side, but nothing happened. Of course. Emergency regulations - all electronic locks would have popped, allowing for easy evacuation. I grabbed the knob and turned it, and opened the door on a different world.
It was as startling as opening up a broom closet at the Ritz - all of a sudden, there was no expensive thick carpet, no indirect lighting, no artwork. Just metal, some indoor-outdoor carpet for traction, and plain fixtures that wouldn't have been out of place on a fish trawler. Aldonza stepped over the watertight lip of the door and gestured me inside. Clark tried to go with us, but I stopped her with an outstretched hand. "No," I said. "Get to the lifeboat stations. The captain's probably going to try to get you off as quickly as possible."
"In this storm? How?"
"Trust me. He'll find a way." I shook her hand. "Love your movies, by the way. Sorry about incinerating your cabin."
"These things happen," she said, deadpan. "And I hope you find a way to stop this before it goes any further."
Me too,I thought, but I didn't even really know what I was heading toward in the first place.
Aldonza shut the watertight door and spun the locking mechanism. Nobody would be getting in that way, not now.
"Come on," she said, and offered me her shoulder. "You want the hold, yes? Where your friends went?"
I nodded, and off we went.
The hallways here were narrow industrial constructions, and as we passed larger open spaces they were uniformly workmanlike. A TV lounge area big enough for a few dozen, with comfortable but un-fancy Sears-style furniture. A computer area with banks of monitors and keyboards. A mess hall with all the charm of mess halls everywhere.
The place was deserted. "Where is everybody?"
"Duty stations," Aldonza said. "Organizing the passengers." All of them? I supposed that made sense; we were heading down now, flights of narrow stairs descending into the emergency-lit bowels of the ship. Stairs. Lovely. Feel the burn, Baldwin.
I wondered where David had gone.
"One more," Aldonza murmured, when I had to stop for trembling breaths. "You're sure you want to do this?"
"No choice," I said, and coughed. "Let's go."
The bottom of the stairs opened into another hallway. This one held crew quarters - four narrow bunks to a room, top and bottom on each side, with small lockers in the middle on the far wall. Most had homey touches - photos of family, home, friends. Magazines to read, or books. Colorful nonstandard blankets and pillows.
Aldonza stopped.
"What?" I asked. She let go of me and took a step back. I braced myself on the metal wall, looking first at her, then down the hall.
Lights were going out, one by one, marching up the corridor toward us.
"Which way to the hold?"
"That way," she said. "Straight on, then go left when you must turn. The crew entrance to the hold is there."
"Get out of here," I said. "Run."
She stared at me in confusion for a few seconds, then she must have seen what was happening inside me.
She backed away and ran.
And I went toward the darkness.
And the darkness went into me.
Chapter Seven
The danger sign was that I felt... better. Calmer. Steadier.
I shouldn't have, not at all. I was operating on threads, and yet suddenly I felt assured, in control, and powerful.
The containment was leaking. Leaking badly. I was starting to turn around again, and I needed to do what I'd come to do before that happened.
I wasn't totally blind. Earth Wardens can sense heat, shapes, all kinds of frequencies not usually accessible to other regular folks (or Wardens), and with my night vision, I could see the hallway, the cool shapes of closed doors, and a long empty stretch.
The hallway ended in a blind T-shaped intersection, and I turned left as Aldonza instructed. At the end was a big double-sized watertight door with all kinds of warnings and crew restrictions blazoned next to it.
I spun the wheel and pulled. The air on the other side felt heavy and thick, unpleasantly stale. No fire, at least. And no ocean flooding in, which made me wonder why we were sitting so low in the water.
The