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“Gonna hit the override and get you,” Amos said “The inner door is fked, so we’ll lose some atmo, but not too much—”

“Okay, but do it soon,” Holden said “I’s on this crate”

A moment later, the airlock door opened in a puff of atmosphere Amos started to step out into the bay when the rabbed the heavy plastic container with one hand and the bulkhead with the other, and threw the container at hih that Holden felt the vibration through his suit Itmechanic fell back with a curse and the airlock doors shot closed again

“Sorry,” Aet this open—”

“No!” Holden yelled “Stop opening the daodda to cut my cable I really don’t want to be stuck in here without a radio”

With the airlock closed, the ine roo wounds caused by Holden’s gun pulsed wetly

“I can see it, Cap,” Alex said “If I stoht out those doors”

“No,” Naomi and Amos said at almost the same time

“No,” Naoo high g, it’ll break every bone in his body, even if he soht,” Amos said “That plan’ll kill the captain It’s off the table”

Holden listened for a few ue about how to keep hile itself up the bulkhead and see into their discussion “A high-g burn would alht now But that doesn’t necessarily take it off the table”

The neords that ca fronize the botanist’s voice at first

“Well,” Prax said “That’s interesting”

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Prax

When Eros died, everyone watched The station had been designed as a scientific data extraction engine, and every change, death, and metamorphosis had been captured, recorded, and streaovernments of Mars and Earth had tried to suppress had leaked out in the weeks and months that followed How people viewed it had e To some people, it had been news For others, evidence For more than Prax liked to think, it had been an entertainment of terrible decadence—a Busby Berkeley snuff flick

Prax had watched it too, as had everyone on his teaic of conventional biology to the effects of the proto and, for the —the spiral curves so sinature of the infected bodies shifting in patterns that al had coether