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“Regardless,” Prax said, “I think we should probably hurry”
The plan was sio bay and free the captain as soon as the bay doors had shut behind the intruder Naoer the doors to close the one after the radioactive bait Alex would fire the engines as soon as doing so wouldn’t kill the captain And the bait—a half-kilo cylinder with a thin case of lead foil to keep it froh thecrewlove of the environh his mind
“Maybe it would be better if Amos did this part,” Prax said “I’ve never actually done any extravehicular anything before”
“Sorry, Doc I’ve got a ninety-kilo captain to haul,” Amos said
“Couldn’t we autoentleness of the syllable carried the weight of a thousand get-your-ass-out-theres Prax checked the seals on his suit one ood The suit wasGanymede It enty-five meters froo bay doors at the extreo all the way there He tested the radio tether to
That was another interesting question Was the radio-ja effect a natural output of the enerated biologically Would the effect end when the monster left the ship? When it was burned up by the exhaust?
“Prax,” Nao out”
The outer airlock door cycled open His first impulse was to push out into the darkness the way he would into a large roo as ainst the skin of the ship as humanly possible Prax took the bait in one hand and used the toe rings to lift hi The Rocinante was a raft of metal and paint on an ocean More than an ocean The stars wrapped around him in all directions, the nearest ones hundreds of lifetimes away, and thenon a tiny little asteroid orup at a too-wide sky flipped and he was at the top of the universe, looking down into an abyss without end It was like a visual illusion flipping between a vase and then two faces, then back again at the speed of perception Prax grinned up, spreading his arness even as the first taste of nausea crawled up the back of his tongue He’d read accounts of extravehicular euphoria, but the experience was unlike anything he’d iht of infinite stars, and he was a speck of dust on a speck of dust, clipped by hisboots to the body of a ship unthinkably more powerful than himself, and unimportant before the face of the abyss His suit’s speakers crackled with background radiation from the birth of the universe, and eerie voices whispered in the static
“Uh, Doc?” Amos said “There a proble to see the mechanic beside him The milk-white universe of stars was all that htness Instead, the Rocinante was dark except for the EVA lights and, toward the rear of the ship, a barely visible white nebula where ato bay
“No,” Prax said “No problems”
He tried to take a step forward, but his suit didn’t budge He pulled, straining to lift his foot fro His toe moved forward a centi rong with the o bay door before the creature dug through and into engineering and the reactor itself
“Um I have a problem,” he said “I can’t move my feet”
“What are the slide controls set to?” Naos down to th “I’ boots before, and it was a strange sensation Forfelt free and alht his foot toward the hull, there would be a moment, a critical point, when the force took hold and sla snatched down, step by step He couldn’t see the cargo bay doors, but he knehere they were Fro aft, they were to the left of the drive cone But on the right side of the ship No, starboard side They call it starboard on ships
He knew that just past the dark e of the ship, the creature was digging at the walls, clawing through the flesh of the ship toward its heart If it figured out as going on—if it had the cognitive capacity for even basic reasoning—it could co up out of the bay at hi to clonetic boots while the creature cut hi breath and lifted the bait
“Okay,” he said “I’m in position”
“No time like the present,” Holden said, his voice strained with pain but atteht,” Prax said
He pressed the small timer, hunched close to the hull of the ship, and then, with everythe little cylinder into nothing It flew out, catching the light fro Prax had the nauseating certainty that he’d forgotten a step, and that the lead foil wouldn’t co,” Holden said “It s black fingers folding up fro itself up to the ship’s exterior like it had been born to the abyss Its eyes glowed blue Prax heard nothing but his own panicked breathing Like an anie to be still and silent, though through the vacuum, the creature wouldn’t have heard him if he’d shrieked
The creature shifted; the eerie eyes closed, opened again, closed; and then it leapt The un-twinkling stars were eclipsed by its passage