Now, as she slammed the cube door open, she was flooded with the sick feeling that she might have been wrong.
Out in the main dome, Marjorie was greeted by a wall of engineers’ backs. On tiptoe, she was almost as tall as a Dedelphi, and she stared over shoulders and between heads, not believing what she saw.
The normally opaque dome was, by Uncle Teige's order, as clear as glass. Everybody's attention pointed toward the big dome of Pogo Town. A ragged hole gaped in the side. Debris spun off into space, blown by escaping air. One piece must have hit the engineering dome, causing the noise.
Where're the patch jobbers? thought the engineer side of her brain.
A pair of ladders had been laid against the deck. Two Dedelphi in white-and-yellow-webbed pressure suits gripped the rungs and crawled through the hole in the dome. Behind them, more Dedelphi handed out additional sections of ladder. One Dedelphi joined these to the ladder she was leaning against, as if she were laying down track. The other reached back to receive a big square of sheet metal, which she shoved against the dome. She was handed another sheet. She leaned that against the first, making a little tent over herself and her companion. Two more sheets made another tent smack up against the first. More sections of ladder were handed through. Another pair of Dedelphi climbed up behind the first These had welding torches, braces, and clamps.
All at once, Marjorie saw what they were doing. They were building a tunnel. Out of steel. A tunnel heading straight for the engineering dome.
“Ozone, get the captain. Dump the video logs to security with a red scramble and a red alert.” Teige's voice was more calm than she'd ever heard it. Normally, he seemed on the verge of an early heart attack. Marjorie glanced at him. His face was white as a ghost. “People, let's not stand here,” said Uncle Teige. “Everybody get—”
“What the …?” Someone pointed.
To the left and right of the tunnel, hatches in the deck, maybe half a meter in diameter, slid open. Four of them all together. Out of each rose an elongated mechanical assembly.
Here it comes. Marjorie actually crossed her fingers. I swear I'll listen to anything Keale ever says after this if this just works, I swear. I swear.
The guns unfolded themselves into a sleek shape that allowed for rapid fire and continuous reload.
“That's not in the spec,” said someone else, high and sharp, on the verge of hysteria.
The guns, silent in the vacuum, opened fire. The hand of the nearest pogo exploded into a red cloud. She fell back. The helmet on another cracked and in the next second she had no face. She fell, too. The steel sheet she held began to topple. Two more pogos grabbed the steel. The wounded ones were handed down the ladder. A pogo with a welding torch fell next, blood and skin splattering against the improvised tunnel. Another pogo grabbed the equipment up and took her place, welding the steel sheets together. More sheets, more ladders and more braces. One of the Dedelphi glanced up at the Humans, stunned and staring inside their dome, and looked down to her work again as if they were nothing more than fish in an aquarium.
“All hands!” Captain Esmeraude's voice exploded over the intercom. “Cut and run! I repeat, cut and run! Reassemble at the main hangar!”
Marjorie felt her jaw drop. Cut and run. Sabotage what you could and get out of there. She knew the order existed, but she'd never in a million years expected to hear it given. All at once, exit instructions started scrolling across her camera eye.
“Ozone, cloud the dome!” shouted Teige, sounding more like his usually outraged self. The roof and walls resumed their normal milky color. Whatever was going on outside was going on without them. “Bran, Gale, get in the hole and find out what's going on down there. Do what you can. Colin, we're cutting out here. Everybody else, evac! Let's move it!” Uncle Teige's hands flew across his station while he talked. One by one, the engineering stations shut down.
Bran and Gale opened the floor hatches and clambered down the ladders. Colin yanked his pry-key off his belt and flipped open the nearest station's paneling. A pair of wire cutters gleamed in his other hand.
Marjorie forced her way out of the crowd of engineers and headed for the equipment locker. They had time, not much, but time. The welding equipment the pogos carried had given her an idea. They could melt large sections of wiring if they hurried.
“Marjorie …” began Uncle Teige angrily.
The dome shivered. A deep, resounding boom filled the chamber, followed fast by the sound of shattering doped-glass and a hurricane wind rushing toward the mouthlike hole in the dome's side. A few people fed onto their backs and were dragged out of the main path of the wind by friends. Through the ragged hole, Marjorie saw the Dedelphi and their tunnel just three meters away. The bullets sparked and ricocheted off the steel, but didn't cut through it.