BOUNDARY(108)

Now Jackie's voice broke in. "That's at least one too many assumptions. They might have been peaceful enough, intrinsically— but had to deal with somebody or something else that wasn't. There's a difference between aggression and self-defense."



"Okay, guys, quiet down, let us work a bit here." Tough suits or not, Joe didn't want to be distracted by chatter while exerting a lot of force on small areas.



This door, however, refused to budge. After five minutes of trying, Joe and Harry sagged back in the harnesses. Or, at least, tried to—microgravity did not lend itself well to looking exhausted, whether you really were or not.



"Sorry, Captain, I be givin' her everything we got!" Joe said, in a fake Scots accent.



"Ken, I think we'll have to break out the cutters," A.J. suggested. "I've been going over their suits' sensor signals, and while they're nothing like as good as the Faeries', I can get some pretty good info from them. I think the armory door's locked, which makes sense. Would you leave it open all the time? And if the power died, our friend there couldn't have unlocked the doors."



"I agree," Hathaway stated. "Let's do it—but I'm not sure Joe and Harry are the right ones for the job. Guys?"



Joe, still panting a little, looked at Ingram. "What do you think, Harry?"



Ingram looked longingly at the door. "I'd like to try, but we'd have to go back and get the stuff—and, being honest, I'm not trained in cutting tools for microgravity. Or even regular gravity. And stuff like that can cut our suits, so I don't think it'd be smart to play with it."



Reluctantly, Joe nodded.



"Don't give up quite yet, guys. If you can hang on for about ten minutes, I can have John Henry down there," A.J. offered.



John Henry was one of the heavy-duty drones. "Wasn't he working on securing parts of Phobos Hab Three?"



"His job's done for now. They won't need him for at least a few hours. Captain? How about it?"



"Let me check, A.J."



There was a pause while Hathaway verified with the work crews that the heavy-duty drone wouldn't be needed for a while. "Okay, go ahead. You've got a few hours at least."



Technically, Captain Hathaway didn't have to be involved in everything at this level but—like most of the crew—he wanted to see and watch everything going on. It would probably be several weeks before anyone started seeing this as a routine job.



"Shouldn't take too long. I get him down there and cut through the areas where the lock catches are engaged, maybe an hour or two tops, unless the stuff's a lot tougher than anything we've found so far. That might be true when we get to wherever they kept the big guns, if they had any. But I don't think it'll be the case here."



Joe took advantage of the delay to sip a bit of water and take a nibble of what he called "granola paste." The stuff was a tasty, if rather ugly-looking, snack he'd devised during the voyage. The stuff NASA provided them had offended every gourmet bone in Joe's body, once he tried it. He'd been quite sure he could come up with something better.



And so he had, with a little experimentation. His "granola paste" was just as easy to dispense from a tube as NASA's equivalent, yet had some real taste and even retained a little texture for chewing. People could eat it without feeling like they were eating baby food.



A while later, bright lights at the doorway announced the arrival of the squat, squarish work drone. Using both small jets and its own manipulators to move around, the remote was somewhat ominous in the way it made its entrance, seeming to climb through the doorway and drift forward.



"Okay, guys, stay clear. Electron-beam cutting is not something you want to be anywhere near."



"Roger that." Joe and Harry moved into the target range area. "Okay, we're plenty clear."



"Firing her up. John Henry, start drivin' that steel. Or those electrons, anyway."



A few minutes later, they heard A.J. grunt in what sounded a positive fashion.



"How's it going?"



"Cutting away. It's a little slow, but not too bad. You guys okay for another fifteen minutes or so? I think that'll do it for all the catches. This thing has three, near as I can tell."



Harry nodded, the motion easily visible through the mostly transparent helmet.



"We're both good, A.J. Go ahead."



It was only a bit longer than A.J.'s estimate when he gave the all-clear. "Give it a try."



After setting up the opener, the two looked at each other and then gave a pull. The door slid so suddenly that if they hadn't been strapped in, both would have been sent flying off through the nonexistent air.