Claire rolled onto her back again, pulling Andy onto the elastic softness of her abdomen, and patted and kissed him frantically. The timbre of his screams began to change from the frightening high-pitched cry of pain to the less piercing bellows of indignation, but the volume was just as loud.

"They'll hear him all the way up in the pilot's compartment!" Tony hissed in anguish. "Do something!"

"I'm trying," Claire hissed back. Her hands shook. She tried to push Andy's head toward her breast, standard comfort, but he turned his head away and screamed louder. Fortunately, the sound of the atmosphere rushing over the shuttle's skin had risen to a deafening thunder. By the time the noise peaked and faded, Andy's cries had become whimpering hiccups. He rubbed his face, slimy with tears and mucous, mournfully against Claire's T-shirt. His weight on Claire's stomach and diaphragm half-stopped her breath, but she dared not lay him down.

Another set of clunks reverberated through the shuttle. The engines' vibrations changed their pitch, and Claire was plucked this way and that by changing acceleration vectors, none as strong as the one emanating from the floor. She spared two hands from comforting Andy to brace herself against the plastic crates.

Tony lay beside them, biting his lips in helpless anxiety. "We must be coming down to land on the surface."

Claire nodded. "At one of the shuttleports. There'll be people there—downsiders—maybe we can tell them we got trapped aboard this shuttle by accident. Maybe," she added hopefully, "they'll send us right back up home."

Tony's right upper hand clenched. "No! We can't give up now! We'd never get another chance!"

"But what else can we do?"

"We'll sneak off this ship and hide, until we can get on another one, one that's going to the transfer station." His voice turned earnest with urgent pleading as a puff of dismay escaped Claire's parted lips. "We did it once, we can do it again."

She shook her head in doubt. Further argument was interrupted by a startling series of thumps that shook the whole ship and then blended into a low continuous rumble. The light falling through the window shifted its beam around the cargo bay as the shuttle landed, taxied, and turned. Then it winked out, the cargo bay dimmed, and the engines whined to an equally startling silence.

Claire cautiously unbraced herself. Of all the acceleration vectors, only one remained. Isolated, it became overwhelming.

Gravity. Silent, implacable, it pressed against her back—she struggled with a nasty illusion that it might suddenly cease, and the thrust it imparted slam her into the ceiling above, smashing Andy between. In an accompanying optical illusion, the whole cargo bay seemed to be chugging in a slow circle around her. She closed her eyes in self-defense.

Tony's hand tightened in warning on her left lower wrist. She looked up and froze as the outside cargo bay door at the forward end of the compartment slid open.