Chapters (32)
A red warning light began to flash on the screen: the hydrogen concentration in the lower five levels had surpassed 15 percent.
I reached for the radio again. I used the open emergency broadcast channel. I wanted everyone to know who those emergency evac suits were carrying. I needed them to understand.
I said what I had to say, and there were only minutes left. The stream of evac suits from Homestead had stopped. I had not counted them. There were more than a few, enough to form a bright cluster of stars on the navigation screen.
I entered the command to spark the fires, one level at a time. It would spread quickly.
I rose from the chair and opened the door of the bridge to let the deadly air in. Hydrogen gas has no odor, no color. It surrounded me, as invisible as desert wind twisting through a slot canyon. It felt like nothing at all. I staggered over to the officers’ ready room and slid to the floor to lean against the glass wall. The parasites were still on the other side. I could see, in the tangle of corpses on the floor, a single plait of Panya’s yellow hair.
My vision was dimming, marred by black spots, and my head ached. I didn’t close my eyes. I wanted to keep looking at that constellation of bright stars on the screen, the proof that my sister and brother had survived, proof that there had been room for courage under the fearful oppression of Adam’s madness. Proof that even the worst of us could not crush hope so thoroughly there was no way out of the darkness.
There was a roar of sound somewhere in the ship, like a storm rolling over distant peaks. The flash of light and heat, when it came, was as sudden and beautiful as the sun rising over the desert.