Seas of Venus(80)
Brainard staggered, numb all over. The balcony rail was against the small of his back. The wide arc to his front was a blur of screams and faces filled with wolfish glee.
Another door slammed open. Captain Glenn, Officer in Charge of the Herd's screening forces, stepped onto the balcony. Glenn was stark naked except for his flat uniform hat, covered with gold braid.
"What in the hell is going on out here?" the captain bellowed. Two girls peeked out of the doorway behind him. Neither of them seemed more than pubescent.
Holman knelt on the balcony and put his hands to his face. The knuckles of his right hand were bloody.
"He killed my brother Ted," Holman sobbed; then he vomited onto the floor.
On the ballroom ceiling, the holographic display again formed itself into a ravening jungle.
2
May 17, 382 AS. 1051 hours.
Leaf's mind split into a part that understood what was happening and another part that still believed he could survive. He'd unlatched the access plate to #2 fan and was sprawled within the nacelle when he felt the torpedoboat lift onto her last crest. Air boomed with the braking effect of the skirts.
Leaf's left hand gripped the fan mount while leg muscles locked his boots against K67's starboard rail and the lip of the nacelle opening. His right hand held the multitool with which he had just loosened journals of the fan's back bearing and squirted in microsphere lubricant. The bitch'd shake herself to shrapnel in forty minutes, but that was half an hour longer than she'd last before burning if the motorman did nothing.
Leaf had had to disconnect the hose feeding cool, dry air to his environmental suit before he crawled into the nacelle. The suit's impermeable membrane trapped his sweat and body heat, steaming him like a shrimp dinner.
The climate wouldn't have time to be fatal, though, because Leaf had also unsnapped his safety line.
Leaf dropped his multitool to grip another handful of rim. The spring lanyard spooled the tool up snugly beneath his right arm. It would come through the next few seconds just fine.
The hovercraft dropped, touched a solid surface, and spun with the momentum of more than 40 knots times her mass.
Leaf's existence was a montage in which serial time no longer ruled:
The barrels of the twin machine-guns in the gun tub cut an arc to port, then to starboard, against the white sky. Yee, strapped into the gunner's seat, swung between the weapons like a participant on a carnival ride.
Ensign Brainard sat like a statue, his head visible through the cockpit windscreen. He was shouting something into the interphone, but Leaf could only hear the timbre of the CO's voice in a universal roar too great for even the circuitry of his commo helmet to sort out.
A palm fought with a blackberry at the edge of the jungle. Thorns probed deep into the palm's hard tissues, but its wounds wept a binary sap which smoldered as its chemicals oozed onto the bramble.
K67's starboard quarter struck hard enough to compress #4 fan against a coral head. The blades exploded upward, through the guards and housing. If that fan had been running hot instead of #2, Leaf would be lunchmeat.
The sea was a huge spout of vivid green against the sky. The dismembered head of something reptilian slammed its jaws on another fragment of its body.
Tools, cups, and the holographic image of a naked woman flew from the torpedohouse aft the cockpit. Tech 2 Caffey, the torpedoman, and his striker were harnessed safely into their seats.
Unlike Leaf.
Instinct anticipated the shocks where intellect would have been overwhelmed.
Right boot shifted, right side tight against the edge of the access port—God! it hurt, but if he'd been flung sideways the three inches of a moment before, the lip would have broken his pelvis.
Down, chest flat against the mesh guards and the fan still howling at full revs. Inertia slams down a thousand times harder, bulging the mesh and crushing the breath from the motorman's lungs.
Forward—his arms took the strain and he screams but they take the strain. Right side, again, and worse, but alive. He's still all right. Not great; the inside of his visor is speckled with what looked like mud but was blood from when he banged his nose. Broken bones or just pulled muscles? But . . . alive.
K67 slammed down squarely, compressed what was left of her skirts, and sprang three feet into the air before coming to rest. Leaf had nothing to brace him against the last shock. He flew out of the nacelle like a bomb from the tube of a mortar.
He tumbled in the air. He'd lost his helmet, though he didn't know how: the chin strap was supposed to be strong enough to tow a destroyer. Slime and water splashed to envelope him. It was a moment before Leaf realized that he was no longer moving.
And that he was alive.
Leaf gasped a lungful of air. He screamed it back out because of the pain in his ribs. He lay on his back in a pool, floating easily because of the air trapped in his environmental suit.