Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(92)

Completely irrelevant to the task at hand.

Or not. Because there was something quite pertinent that had never occurred to him before. There were no airlocks leading out of the battleroom cubes. If something happened to damage the station so severely that the battleroom corridors were compromised, there was no other escape route. Ultimately, just the one corridor providing an exit from all the battlerooms.

The most terrible place to be if somebody attacked the station, because there would be no escape.

That was important information. He would tell Monkey, she would tell the others. Maybe they’d change their plans. Maybe they wouldn’t. He could imagine Zhang He saying, “Dabeet just doesn’t like the plan because he didn’t think of it.”

So unfair of Dabeet to think that. Zhang He wasn’t his friend, he understood that now. But it didn’t mean he was Dabeet’s enemy. That sense of betrayal, Dabeet couldn’t give it any weight. In all likelihood, Zhang He would be the one who’d instantly recognize the danger, argue on the same side as Monkey. We can’t stake our survival on the sturdiness of the corridor connections.

Dabeet shut his eyes. He hadn’t come out here to play through imaginary scenarios of how the other students would react to any information that came from him. This wasn’t the time or place to indulge his hurt feelings. His loneliness.

He opened his eyes and stared straight forward. With the hoops of the station in his peripheral vision, the battleroom boxes mostly above him, all he could see straight forward was … nothing. Stars.

And then, suddenly, not nothing. The luminous blue and white of Earth, larger from here than the Moon was from Earth.

His eyes immediately tried to find recognizable objects on the globe. Was that Africa? No, it was clouds. Were those mountains? Maybe, doesn’t matter. Does not matter.

And then the stab of light as the Sun first edged into view. At once his screen darkened in a single patch, making a near-total eclipse of the Sun inside his suit. Good design, thought Dabeet. Good for people wearing these suits not to go blind whenever they happen to spin to face a star.

The station was rotating at a decent clip. He hadn’t realized how fast they were moving.

But not moving in a straight line. Spinning. So if he fell away from the station, he would continue, not in the station’s general line of movement through the universe, but rather in the exact line where he happened to be going when he let go of the station. It would basically shoot him in that direction like a ball flying out of a jai alai player’s cesta. He’d have to work out the physics of that.…

Later.

Still gripping the bar outside the airlock door, Dabeet tried to push himself up—no, down—from the surface of the hull by pressing with his other hand. But all that happened was his other hand got caught in the nanooze.

Br’er Rabbit and the tar baby. Whatever you touch to get leverage, you’re stuck to that, too.

Not possible. Nanooze wouldn’t be useful if you couldn’t unstick yourself, and easily.

He raised his hand from the nanooze. There was only a momentary tug and his hand was free.

Instead of trying to push himself off the hull, Dabeet simply rolled toward the side where he was gripping the bar. The nanooze let him go quite easily. Good thing he hadn’t trusted it to hold him. It was there to seal breaches in the hull, not to fasten stupid boys to the surface.

So let’s say that the enemy ship is docked at an airlock on the main level of the … which ring? This uppermost ring?

He needed a clearer map of the station in his head. He remembered what he had seen. Not this ring, the next ring down. The middle one.

He tried to imagine what the jointure between the rings would be like. Could he get from this ring to the other one without letting go and just flying there?

No flying. Rule One.

Because he was now hovering just over the open airlock door, he was tempted to go back inside. Hadn’t he learned a lot already? That was a good first day, wasn’t it?

Dabeet tried to imagine two-year-old Monkey doing just this much, and her father saying, Come inside now, Monkey, come inside. And Monkey would say, No, Papa, no, no, I want to do more, I haven’t done nothin’ yet.

Am I afraid of Monkey’s contempt?

Yes sir, that I am.

What goal would be reasonable for this first expedition? Dabeet cast his gaze along the tube and saw that the next airlock was only about … about … he had no idea of the distance. He remembered inside the tube. How far to the next airlock? Much farther than it seemed to be out here. But that was a reasonable goal.

He looked around the perimeter of the open airlock door and found the CLOSE button. He almost pressed it before realizing that perhaps he should make sure no part of his body would be between the closing door and the frame. Ouch, that would have been nasty. He pulled himself away from the open door, which involved holding on to the bar with both gloves.

Then he could hardly bring himself to let go of the bar with one hand so he could press the button.

I’m going to have to let go of things all the time. Not till I have hold of other things, right, but still. Most of the time, only one hand will hold me to this ship that’s right overhead.

Overhead.

Dabeet gently pulled his legs free of the nanooze and let them drift up … no, downward, so that now he really was hanging from the bar by both hands. Gravity wasn’t tugging him “downward,” but at least now he could feel like both hands were his connection to the station. Yet he could let go with one hand and reach upward to the button. Push. Slow but steady closure of the door. Dabeet counted. Four seconds to close. Looked slow, was actually fairly quick.