Space Stations

“Just overnight?” Forste asked. “That's all you want?”

“What I want has nothing to do with it,” Bob countered. “I'm just trying to deal with the reality of the situation.”

“Of course,” Forste said. “You're never responsible for anything around here, are you?”

With a sigh, Bob set both hypos down on the table. “It's your call,” he told Forste. “You tell me what to do.”

Forste looked down at the hypos; and as he did so, there was a click from his thumb.

“Forste,” he said, raising his hand to his lips.

“It's Sjuende,” a faint voice came back. “I found the leaking canister.”

Forste's gun lifted an inch closer to Bob's face. “Poison gas?” he asked.

“Nitrogen,” Sjuende said, sounding disgusted. “I've shut it off.”

Forste frowned. “Nitrogen?”

“To make nitrates for the plants,” Bob explained, frowning to himself. There was something odd about Sjuende's voice. A faint slurring, perhaps? “I already told you there wasn't anything poisonous in that room.”

Forste took a deep breath, let it out. “All right, Sjuende,” he said. “Stay there. Annen's on his way back; help him get Disabler One in place.”

“You sure?” Sjuende asked. “Attende and I still have a lot of work to do before Disabler Two can be set up.”

“Disabler One can be in place in thirty minutes if Annen has enough extra hands to help him,” Forste snapped. “Let's try to get at least something ready to go before we quit for the day, shall we?”

“Yes, sir,” Sjuende muttered.

Forste tapped his thumbnail and turned to Annen, who was glowering silently over by the door. “Well? Get going.”

“Yes, sir.” Annen sent one final glower toward the injured Femte, then turned and left.

Forste looked back at Bob and gave a nod that managed to be curt and reluctant at the same time. “Put him to sleep.”

“But I'm fine, sir,” Femte protested.

“Shut up,” Forste said. “You just concentrate on getting a good night's sleep. You'll need it when we play catch-up tomorrow.”

Femte sighed. “Yes, sir.”

Five minutes later he was stretched out on the cot next to his burn-foamed comrade. “I expected the possibility of injuries while neutralizing the Secret Service agents,” Forste muttered under his breath. “Or possibly after the attack, if any of the Marines survived long enough to get into suits and packs. I didn't expect we'd lose two men while we were just setting up.”

“Space Fort Jefferson isn't exactly your average work area, of course,” Bob pointed out absently, still trying to figure out what in Sjuende's voice had caught his attention. “This can be a risky place if you're not familiar with it.”

“Apparently so.” Forste lifted his thumbnail. “Fjerde? Any progress with the comm system?”

“I've got the antenna apart now,” the other reported. “It's got a lot of rust and dirt embedded in it. I'll clean it and see if it works any better then.”

Bob felt his stomach suddenly tense. Rust? “Mr. Forste—”

Forste cut him off with a glare. “Consider it break time,” he told the other. “Get down to Launch Center Six and help Annen and Sjuende.”

“Yes, sir.”

Forste tapped the nail and hefted his gun toward Bob. “Don't you ever interrupt me—”

“Your man Sjuende said he and Attende had a lot of work to do,” Bob cut him off. “Did it involve cleaning off rust?”

Forste eyed him guardedly. “Yes.”

“Are they using our bottles of cleaner?” Bob asked. “And if so, are they wearing breathing masks?”

Forste's expression was starting to cloud over again. “Why?”

“Because the cleaner is toxic, that's why,” Bob said. “After a couple of hours, especially in an enclosed space like that—”

Forste snarled a curse, his gun jabbing into Bob's ribs. “Come on. Bring the kit.”

They found Attende sprawled on the floor in Number Four, his arms and legs twitching as he babbled something incomprehensible. “Damn, damn, damn,” Forste snarled, kneeling down beside him. A spray bottle and rag were still clutched in the man's hands; gingerly, Forste pushed both of them as far away as he could. “Why the hell isn't this stuff labeled as dangerous?”

“The main drum is,” Bob said, kneeling on his other side and opening the first-aid kit.

“We have to buy it in bulk—it's cheaper that way—and put it into our own bottles.

Didn't you see the masks in the storage locker?”

“The bottles weren't labeled,” Forste bit out. “Why would they expect to need them?

What's he babbling about?”

“Probably nothing,” Bob said, finding a wide-spectrum detoxifier hypo in the kit and injecting it into the twitching man's arm. “On its way to suffocating you, the stuff is also a pretty potent hallucinogen. Who knows what he's seeing?”

“Can you save him?”

Bob laid the biosensor strip across the side of the man's neck and watched as the numbers came up. “He'll be fine,” he assured Forste. “We got to him in time, and this stuff's great for cleaning all sorts of toxins out the system. Though around here we mostly use it after too much time with the whiskey bottle.”

Forste grunted. “So what now? He just sleeps it off?”