"Get'm boys!" he yelled, and fired.

Then the strange weapons belched streams of something gray that shoved him back into his men, and

glued them all into one immobile mass. When the next explosion came, from the far end, he had a sudden stark fear that it would ignite the charges his crew had left behind, and blow them all. He was not, he discovered, nearly as ready to meet his Maker as he'd always claimed.

"Dumber than dirt," Jig Arek said, with some satisfaction. "You'd think they never heard of riot control."

"We still have one bunch loose," Oblo said.

"Belay that," Meharry said, in what for Meharry was a tense voice. "We've got worse problems. Brun and Suiza fell off the station."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

One moment, Esmay had been checking where everyone was; the next, with no warning, the gurney tent ruptured; air puffed out. Live fire, it had to be. Esmay threw herself on the gurney, covering Brun's body, and slammed Brun's faceshield shut. Even through her armor, she could feel Brun breathing; she could see Brun's face, rigid with fury or terror-she couldn't tell which-but the mask was clear, which meant that air and filters were both working. She pushed herself up a little and locked the elbow position so her armor wouldn't crush Brun if something hit her hard.

Something thumped into her armor once, and again; someone fell over her; excited voices yelled in her suit com. She ignored them; she and her armor were between Brun and whatever was going on, and someone else could handle that.

Then the deck bucked hard, buckled, and the damaged bulkhead peeled away. She caught a glimpse of other suited figures tumbling-someone grabbing for the other gurney-and some blow thrust her toward the opening, out into the brilliant sunlight.

By the time she realized she was tumbling outside the station, she knew she was still clinging to Brun, the armor's power-assisted gloves clamped to the frame of the gurney. The view beyond shifted crazily: light/dark, starfield/planet/station. She tried to focus on the helmet readouts, and finally found the ones that gave an estimated relative vee to her "ship"-the station-a mere

2.43 meters per second.

Brun, when she looked, was staring back at her with no recognition. Of course not-Esmay had never changed her faceshield to allow it. Impossible now. She had no idea what to do, but she knew one thing not to do-let go of the gurney frame. Her suit had the beacon.

"Lieutenant!" That loud shout in her helmet com got her attention; she hoped it was the first call.

"Suiza here," she said, surprised that her voice sounded as calm as it did.

"Lieutenant, have you got the gurney?"

"Yup," Esmay said. "She's alive; air's flowing."

"What about you? Somebody thought they saw a plume."

Another look at her helmet readouts was not so reassuring. Her own air was down, and the gauge was sagging visibly. I've been here before, she thought, remembering her first terrifying EVA from Koskiusko. And I didn't like it then.

"Low," she said. "And going down."

"The blast may've pulled your airfeed loose-can you check it?"

"Not without letting go of the gurney," Esmay said. "And I'm not going to. What's the situation?"

"They're dead; we've got two dead, and four tumblers, counting you and the gurney as one. Max has you all on scan. We'll have a sled to you in less than ten minutes."

She didn't have ten minutes.

"What is your air?" That was Meharry.

"Three minutes," Esmay said. "If it doesn't leak any faster."

"Is Brun conscious?"

"Yes. She's looking at me, but she can't see me-my helmet shield's still mirrored."

"I'm going to transmit to her, tell her to see if she can stop your leak."

"No-it's too dangerous."

"It'll be more dangerous if you pass out and can't help guide the sled in."

She could see the change in Brun's expression, though Meharry hadn't patched the transmission to her. Then Brun wriggled around, wrapping one arm in the straps waving from the gurney, and reaching around behind Esmay. Her arm wasn't long enough; she tapped Esmay's shoulder.

If Esmay let go with one hand, and turned, Brun might be able to reach whatever it was. But she might lose her grip on the gurney-they might not find her. Brun's tap the next time was a solid slug. Esmay grinned to herself. Whatever the damage, Brun hadn't changed in some essentials.

Carefully, slowly, Esmay loosened her grip on the gurney frame on that side, and transferred her grip to one of the grab straps on Brun's p-suit. Brun wriggled more. The air gauge quit dropping .

. . stabilized . . . at eight minutes.

"Eight minutes," Esmay reported to Meharry.

"She's got the luck, that one," Meharry said. She did not say whether eight minutes would be enough. Esmay told herself that one minute of oxygen deprivation was within anyone's capacity.

Brun bumped against her, flinging out an arm and leg. What was the idiot doing-oh. Slowing rotation. Esmay extended her legs on the other side. The confusing whirl of backgrounds slowed, as they lay almost crosswise of each other, forming, with the gurney frame, a six-spoked wheel rolling slowly along.

Then Brun reached up with her webbing-wrapped arm, and pushed up Esmay's mirrorshield before Esmay could bring an arm in to stop her. Her eyes widened. Then she grinned, as mischievous and merry a grin as Esmay had ever seen on her face. She used the same arm to work free the thermal-packed bag of IV fluids sticktaped to the gurney, and very deliberately used her glove's screwblade attachment to poke a hole in it. Then she winked at Esmay, looked past her-moved the bag around-and squeezed.

A stream of saline jetted out, instantly converted to a spray of ice crystals that glittered in the sun. Esmay wondered if Brun had just gone completely insane. Then she realized what it was.

For all the good it would do, Brun was trying to use an IV as reaction mass to get them back to the station faster.

Esmay did her best to hold still, even as her air ran out, and the hunger for oxygen overtook her, urging her to run, struggle, fight her way out of the dark choking tunnel that was squeezing the life out of her.

She heard voices before she could see; the steady quiet voices of the medics, and somewhere beyond, quite a bit of cursing and yelling.

"What's her pO2 doing?"

"Coming up. Caught it in time . . ."

"We're going to need another can of spray over here-"

"My God, what'd they do to them?"

"It was the horse, I think-" That in a tentative, soft voice.

Esmay opened her eyes to see unhelmeted faces bent over her. She wanted to ask the logical question, but she would not ask that one. One of the medics anticipated her.

"We're in the shuttle again. Our targets are alive, no wounds taken in the shootout. We lost two dead, eight with minor injuries. The station's pretty much gone and there's a fight going on upstairs somewhere. And now you're with us, we don't have to worry about you any more." The medic winked. "But I do have to do a mental status exam."

Esmay took a deep breath, and only then realized that she still had something up her nose feeding her oxygen. "I'm fine," she said. "What else is going on?" She tried to sit up, but the medic pushed her back.

"Not until we're sure of your blood gases. Your suit telemetry said you were out of air for about two and a half minutes before we got you reconnected, and that's on the edge of the bad zone."