Earthfall Page 0,38
following Dza up the ladder.
Chveya looked around the centrifuge. Was there anyplace to hide the Index here? Not really. The exercise space was largely unencumbered, except for the strength machines, and those offered no concealment. So she clutched the Index under her arm and waited for her turn up the ladder.
Then she saw, where the centrifuge floor curved up to make its circle around the girth of the ship, the break in the carpet where the access door was. When the centrifuge was stopped, the access door could be pulled up so that someone could crawl down into the system of wheels that allowed the centrifuge to spin. The trouble was, it would take half an hour for the centrifuge to spin to a stop even if she turned it off right now. And then another hour or more to spin back up to speed. It would be obvious to Elemak that the centrifuge had been stopped for some reason. She couldn't count on his not noticing. Just because he had never been awake during the voyage didn't mean he wouldn't be aware of anomalies in the working of the ship.
On the other hand, the very fact that the centrifuge hadn't been stopped would imply to him that nothing had been hidden there.
She ran to the access door and pulled up on it. It wouldn't budge-an interlock prevented it from being opened while the centrifuge was spinning. She ran to the nearest emergency stop button and pushed it. The alarm that it sounded was lost in the howling of the main siren. Now the access door could be opened, even though the centrifuge was spinning rapidly. She flopped it back; it formed a slight arch on the curved floor. Through the door she could see the wheels of the centrifuge as the roadway hurtled by beneath them; then her perspective shifted, and she realized that she was on the hurtling surface, and the roadway was really the structure of the rest of the ship, holding still beneath the wheels. Up at the top of the ladder, the spin seemed so much slower. Just as many revolutions per minute, but so close to the center that it wasn't fast at all.
If I drop the Index, will it be crushed?
More to the point, if I fall or even touch the roadway, will I be killed or just maimed and crippled for life?
Sweating, terrified, she extended one leg, then the other, down through the opening until she was standing on the frame of the nearest wheel assembly. Then, holding her weight on her right hand, she braced the Index against the door while she got her hand under it. Balancing the Index on her palm, she carefully lifted it down into the opening and reached into the top of the other wheel assembly, right up under the centrifuge floor. In a place where four metal bars formed a square, she gingerly tipped the Index out of her hand, so that it rolled off and dropped into place. It was secure there-nothing was going to tip it off and it was far too wide to drop through. Best of all, it couldn't be seen unless you got down into the opening so far that your head was under the level of the centrifuge floor. Chances were that long before he got down far enough to see it, Elemak would conclude that it was far too dangerous for anyone to have put the Index down here and would give up and search somewhere else.
In fact, now that she thought about it, it really was dangerous to be down here. And she had to get back up and turn the centrifuge back on so its alarm would stop sounding before the main siren finally shut down. Getting out wasn't as easy as getting down had been, and now that she wasn't concentrating on getting the Index hidden, she had time to be really terrified. Slow, she kept telling herself. Careful. One slip and they'll be scraping bits of me off the road for a month.
Finally she was out, spread-eagle over the opening.
She spider-walked until she was clear of it, then leaped to her feet and flung the door closed. It slammed into place, the catch engaged, and now she could turn the centrifuge back on. She could barely feel it speeding up-it was so well-engineered that in all that time with the motors off, friction had hardly slowed it down at all.
The siren went off The