Showdown at Centerpoint (16 page)

“Hi, everyone,” Anakin said. “I’m back. I’m—I’m real sorry for what I did. I didn’t
mean
to hurt anything—but I did. I’m sorry.”

A miracle of understatement, that. What the child had done might well have condemned millions to a life under tyranny. Marcha could even at least imagine a scenario where loss of the repulsor meant loss of the war for the New Republic, so damaging the New Republic’s prestige that it collapsed altogether. Quite a lot to put on one small child’s shoulders.

“It’ll be all right, Anakin,” Jaina said. “We’ll find a way to fix it all. Don’t you worry.”

Marcha exchanged a glance with her nephew, and then with the Wookiee. Clearly neither of them was in any more of a mood for empty platitudes than she was. But sometimes platitudes were all one had left. And there were times when a completely unreasoned, and unreasonable, expression of optimism was absolutely necessary. “Of
course
it will be all right,” she heard herself saying as she stood up and moved a step or two toward him. “Come here, Anakin.”

Suddenly the child burst into tears, rushed over to
her, and flung his arms around her. “There, there,” she said, putting her arms around him. “There, there.”

If she had known, exactly, what she meant by the comforting words, she might have found them comforting herself.

I
suppose I won’t like the answer if I ask you if this thing can go any faster,” said Lando. The turbovator car continued its stately descent down to the equator line of Hollowtown and the nearest way out. The Glowpoint had started brightening when they were just about at the midpoint of their descent.

Jenica Sonsen shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t like the answer,” she said.

“I had a feeling you’d say that.” Lando looked up through the turbovator car’s overhead viewport. The Glowpoint was dazzlingly bright, but the question was, how
much
brighter and how fast was it brightening. Could he judge it any better by looking at the ground, at the reflected light, rather than at the source? He peered intently at the ground for a moment, then gave it up. Threepio, annoyingly enough, had been right for once. The human eye was just too good at adjusting for changes in brightness. There was no way he could make an eyeball estimate of how fast it was getting worse. He could ask Threepio, of course, but even in the midst of this crisis, there was a part of him that didn’t want to give the droid the satisfaction. Besides, Golden Boy would probably just start giving a running report of brightness levels and drive them all crazy.

“I’d say we’re up to a twenty percent brightness increase,” Luke announced. Of course. With his Jedi
control over his senses, he would be able to make that sort of estimate. “But the brightness isn’t all of it. As we go lower, we’re going to get into thicker air that can hold a lot of heat.” Luke turned to Sonsen. “How high a temperature can this car take?” he asked.

Sonsen shrugged. “How should I know? I doubt if anyone ever bothered to figure it out. It’s a glorified elevator, not a spacecraft. But it’s definitely getting hot in here.”

“There is indeed a significant temperature rise already,” said Threepio. “If you wish, I could gladly provide you with a running account of—”

“No, we would
not
wish,” Lando said. “There’s nothing we can do about it anyway.” He held the palm of his hand flat over the interior wall of the elevator car, and then, very gingerly, touched it with just the tip of his index finger. “The skin of this thing is getting warmer though, and the heat is percolating through. No doubt about it.”

“How long until we’re out of here?” Kalenda asked.

“Another five minutes or so,” Sonsen said. “But there’s a flaw.”

“What flaw?” Lando asked. This place was clearly bad news.

“There’s a pressure differential between the equatorial region of Hollowtown and Shell One, on the other side of the lock. No big deal, maybe an eight percent differential, but it’s enough that you have to use an airlock. The main turbovator airlock jammed up during the second flare. It was never meant to do more than match the slight pressure differential between Hollowtown and Shell One. I managed to get it working again after the flare, but it wasn’t easy, and I’m not so sure my repair is going to hold up.”

“So we’re stuck,” Lando said.

“Heavens! We’ll all be roasted alive,” Threepio said.

“You speak when you’re spoken to,” Sonsen said, obviously starting to share Lando’s opinion of the protocol droid. “We’re not stuck,” she said to the others.
“There’s a personnel lock right next to the turbovator airlock. It’s smaller and simpler, and it got a lot more use, so it’s a real heavy-duty job. I’m sure it’ll still be working. If we can’t get the turbovator lock running, we’ll have to make a run for the personnel lock.”

“But you did happen to mention there’s no oxygen left out there,” Luke said.

“Even if there were any oxygen left, it would probably kill you to breathe out there. Very high COâ levels, plus all sorts of toxic burn products.”

“Can we all make it into the lock at once?” Luke asked.

“Well, the lock is big enough,” said Sonsen. “I don’t think we should try all of us at once. The lock is normally set with this side closed. There’s a control panel on this side of the lock and it has to be operated by hand. I’ll have to open the turbovator door, run for the lock, and get it open. I don’t think it would be so smart to have everyone waiting on me getting the door open. We should do it in two passes.”

“This is going to be interesting,” Lando said.

Sonsen smiled humorlessly. “So it will. But we might get lucky. Maybe the turbovator airlock will work.”

“Maybe it will. But if it doesn’t, and you have to run for the other airlock, I’ll go with you. I used to run a place called Cloud City. I had to go in and out of toxic atmosphere a lot. If you run into trouble, it might be smart to have some help along.”

“Lando, if anyone should go with her, it should be me,” Luke said.

“No,” Lando said. “Your Jedi powers give you the best endurance. We might all need your help. You’ll have to watch everybody. All I want to have to worry about is Sonsen and that airlock.”

Luke seemed about to protest, but then nodded reluctantly. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “And the bad air won’t bother the droids. That’ll be some help.”

“It’s not as if Kalenda and I are helpless or anything,” Gaeriel said.

“No, ma’am, and I didn’t mean to imply that you were,” Lando said. “But we don’t have time to do this politely. The fact of the matter is Sonsen has to go because she knows the lock. Someone should go with her. I’m no hero, but someone who’s had toxic air training is the best choice to go with her. That makes it me. And for what it is worth, next to Luke, we’re
all
helpless. And I might add that Lieutenant Kalenda doesn’t seem to be protesting the arrangement.”

Gaeriel Captison looked from Lando to Kalenda’s expressionless face. “All right,” she said. “I was in politics long enough to know when it’s time to back off.”

“We’re getting lower,” Luke said. “And the heating is starting to move some serious air.”

Lando looked out the window. Luke was right. The lower, thicker layers of air were heating at a different rate than the upper, thinner layers. Hot and cold air at different air pressures was a recipe for weather in any circumstance, but especially in a spinning, inside-out world with a gravity gradient. Dust devils were spinning up everywhere, miniature tornadoes, funnel clouds spewing dust and debris up into the air.

The wind began to howl as the car moved lower and lower, into the nightmare dust storms popping up everywhere. A wall of gritty dust enveloped the car, cutting off the view as the wind peppered the car with thousands of small impacts that clicked and clattered on its exterior.

It seemed as if the winds abruptly reversed direction, and the outside world reappeared as suddenly as it had vanished.

They seemed to have crossed under some sort of cloud deck. The car was moving along the inner wall of the spinning sphere, from the spin axis toward the equatorial regions in a long, swooping curve. By now the car was moving forward as much as it was down, and the increase in apparent weight was more and more noticeable with every moment. Lando realized his eyes had made a subconscious adjustment, deciding
that the car was no longer proceeding down the side of a cliff, but down a long hill that was getting less and less steep with every moment. Some sort of tilt-table mechanism kept the floor even as the car moved down the track.

“Close now,” Sonsen said. “We should start slowing in a minute.” As if on cue, the car began to decelerate smoothly. Lando reached out a hand to steady himself against the wall of the car, but he thought better of it at the last moment. He held his hand a centimeter or two back from the wall, and felt plenty of heat that way.

The car slowed even further, until it was barely moving, maybe twenty-five centimeters a second. The swirling clouds cleared again for a moment and revealed a large two-story building directly ahead. “That’s the main entrance complex for this sector,” said Sonsen. The turbovator’s track led to a large set of pressure doors, the sort that split down the middle, with the two halves sliding apart to either side. “So let’s see what happens,” she said. “I’ll let the automatics try it first.”

The car eased to a complete halt a meter or two in front of the doors, and then nothing happened for a moment.

“Is it broken?” Gaeriel asked.

“It just takes a little time for the pumps to match pressure. Here we go.” The pressure doors started to move apart smoothly enough—but then jammed up when they were only about a meter apart. “Blast it,” Sonsen said. “Exactly what they did before. Let me try cycling them on manual and see if I get lucky.”

She went to the panel by the car’s door and twisted a dial that was pointed to
AUTO
over to
MANUAL OVERRIDE
. She pressed another button marked
OPEN HOLLOWTOWN SIDE AIRLOCK DOORS
. The doors strained a bit, but didn’t move any farther apart. She pushed the
CLOSE DOORS
button—and the doors moved all of three centimeters back toward each other before grinding to
a halt. Sonsen ran through the whole procedure again, but the doors refused to move more than that three centimeters back and forth. “That’s that,” she said. “They won’t open far enough to get the car in, and they won’t shut at all. The inner doors won’t open at all unless the outers are shut.”

“No emergency override on that?” Lando asked. “No way to force inner doors open if the outer ones are jammed?”

“Nope,” Sonsen said. “Why bother, when there was supposed to be breathable air on both sides of the lock, and there’s another airlock ten meters away? I keep telling you people. This is a fancy elevator, not a spacecraft system.”

“All right, then,” said Lando. “Looks like we get out and walk. Time to do a little getting ready.”

He pulled his blouse off, pulled out his vibro-shiv, and started slicing the blouse into ribbons. He saved one larger wad of cloth and stuffed it in his pocket, along with the knife. “Wrap one of these around your mouth and nose,” he said. “If you pass out, or your breathing reflex gets the better of you, a little cloth might filter out the worst of it. And if you
have
to breathe, if you can’t stop yourself, do it through your nose. It does a much better job of cooling and filtering than your mouth.”

“Let’s hope the personnel airlock opens so fast that you’ve lost your shirt for nothing,” Sonsen said.

Lando grinned. “It breaks my heart to mess up my wardrobe when I don’t need to,” he said, “but I think I could deal with it just this once.” Lando wrapped a strip of cloth around his own mouth. “Where’s the other airlock?” Lando asked, his voice a bit muffled by the cloth.

“You can’t quite see it from here,” Sonsen said. “The window is too small. But it’s about ten meters to the left of the main airlock. It should be matched to pressure on the other side, but it shouldn’t take long at all to match—” Sonsen stopped talking, and looked up
at the ceiling of the car, where the air tanks were hanging. “Match pressure,” she said. “Wait a second. I just got an idea. We’ve got air tanks up there. If we dumped the air into the car here, we could get air pressure higher than the outside. Then when we opened the door, our air would push out, instead of the bad air pushing in—”

“And we’d have a pressure curtain,” said Lando. “Good idea! Then the second group could close the doors after we go, and maybe still have some air to breathe.”

“Boost me up there,” Sonsen said. Luke knelt down and made a stirrup out of his hands. Sonsen put her hands on his shoulders to balance herself and stepped into his hands. “Okay,” she said, “up.”

Luke stood up as easily as if there was no weight on him at all.

“Whoa,” Sonsen said. “Captain Calrissian, your friend
is
strong. Steady now. A little to the right—no,
my
right, your
left
. Back a bit. Okay, good.” Sonsen reached for the pressure regulator and touched it gingerly. “Definitely getting hot,” she said, “but not quite hot enough to burn. Not yet.”