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“He thinks you’re an adhed

“Larson, put on an environment suit Do it fast”

“Sir, yes sir!”

The suits they had in the airlock storage lockers would at least have their own air supplies That would cut down on da And an airtight suit would reduce the risk of protoh the ship

Holden waited until Larson had shrugged into a suit, then transmitted the override code to the hatch and it slid open “After you, Larson Command information center, as fast as you can If we run into anyone, especially if they’re throwing up, stay away and let me deal with them”

“Yes, sir,” Larson said, his voice fuzzy over the static-filled radio, then pushed off into the corridor He took Holden at his word and led hi They stopped only when a sealed hatch blocked their way, and then only long enough for Holden’s suit to convince it to open

The areas of the ship they ed at all The bioweapon pod had hit farther aft, and theto Larson, it had killed a nuent of Marines when they tried to stop it But once it had entered engineering, it nored the rest of the crew Larson said that shortly after it got into engineering, the shipwide security caone off-line With no way to knohere the e room, Larson had hidden in a locker to wait it out

“When you ca,” Larson explained “I thought maybe you were another one of thoseIt meant all the hatches and other systeing through the ship was even better The thing that had Holden worried was the lack of people A ship this size had over a thousand crew persons At least some of theh, but so far they hadn’t run across a single one

The occasional puddle of brown goo on the floor was not an encouraging sign

Larson stopped at a locked hatch to let Holden catch his breath The heavy haz to fill up with the stink of his oeat While he took ahis te past the forward galley to one of the elevator bays The CIC is on the deck just above Five, ten minutes tops”

Holden checked his air supply and saw that he had burned nearly half of it He was rapidly approaching the point of no return But soht his ear It was the way he said galley

“Is there soalley?”