the house. It was a good word, she said, because it warned people not to go in. If they did, she said, they might catch the disease and spread it.
'Are you ready?' Bobbi asked, breaking in on his thoughts.
'What does that mean?' He pointed at the symbol on the hatch.
'Burma-Shave.' Bobbi was unsmiling. 'Are you?'
'No ... but I guess I'm as close as I'll ever get.'
He looked at the tank clipped to his belt and wondered again if he was going to draw some poison that would explode his lungs at the first breath. He didn't think so. This was supposed to be his reward. One visit inside the Holy Temple before he was erased, once and for all, from the equation.
'All right,' Bobbi said. 'I'm going to open it - '
'You're going to think it open,' Gardener said, looking at the plug in Bobbi's ear.
'Yes,' Bobbi replied dismissively, as if to say What else? 'It's going to iris open. There'll be an explosive outrush of bad air ... and when I say bad, I mean really bad. How are your hands?'
'What do you mean?'
'Cuts?'
'Nothing that isn't scabbed over.' He held his hands out like a little boy submitting to his mother's pre-dinner inspection.
'Okay.' Bobbi took a pair of cotton work-gloves from her back pocket and drew them on. To Gard's inquiring look she said, 'Hangnails on two fingers. It might not be enough - but it might. When you see the hatch start to iris open, Gard, close your eyes. Breathe from the tank. If you whiff on what comes out of the ship, it's going to kill you as quick as a Dran-O cocktail.'
'I,' Gardener said, 'am convinced.' He slipped the snorkel mouthpiece into his mouth and used the nose-plugs. Bobbi did the same. Gardener could hear/ feel his pulse in his temples, moving very fast, like someone tapping rapidly on a muffled drum with one finger.
This is it ... this is finally it.
'Ready?' Bobbi asked one last time. Muffled by the mouthpiece, it came out sounding like Elmer Fudd: Weady?
Gardener nodded.
'Remember?' Wememboo?
Gardener nodded again.
for Christ's sake, Bobbi, let's go!
Bobbi nodded.
Okay. Be ready
Before he could ask her for what, that symbol suddenly broke apart in curves, and Gardener realized with a deep, almost sickening excitement that the hatch was opening. There was a high thin screaming sound, as if something rusted shut for a long time was now moving again ... but with great reluctance.
He saw Bobbi turn the valve on the tank clipped to her belt. He did the same, then closed his eyes. A moment later, a soft wind pushed against his face, shoving his shaggy hair back from his brow. Gardener thought: Death. That's death. Death rushing past me, filling this trench like chlorine gas. Every microbe on my skin is dying right now.
His heart was pounding much too fast, and he had actually begun to wonder if the outrush of gas (like the rush of gas out of a coffin, his skittish mind chattered) wasn't killing him somehow after all when he realized he had been holding his breath.
He pulled a breath in through the mouthpiece. He waited to see if it would kill him. It didn't. It had a dry, stale taste, but it was perfectly breathable.
Forty, maybe fifty minutes of air.
Slow down, Gard. Take it slow. Make it last. No panting.
He slowed down.
Tried, at least.
Then that high, screaming noise quit. The outrush of air grew softer against his face, then stopped entirely. Then Gardener spent an eternity in the dark, facing the open hatch with his eyes shut. The only sounds were the muffled drum of his heart and the sigh of air through the tank's demand regulator. His mouth already tasted of rubber, and his teeth were locked much too hard on the rubber pins inside the snorkel mouthpiece. He forced himself to get cool and ease up.
At last, eternity ended. Bobbi's clear thought filled his mind:
Okay ... should be okay ... you can open those baby blues, Gard.
Like a kid at a surprise party, Jim Gardener did just that.
5
He was looking along a corridor.
It was perfectly round except for a flat ledge of walkway halfway up one side. The position looked all wrong. For a wild moment he visualized the Tommyknockers as grisly intelligent flies crawling along that walkway with sticky feet. Then logic reasserted itself. The walkway was canted, everything was canted, because the ship was at an angle.
Soft light glowed out of the round, featureless walls.