Starquake.pdf

to the Science Deck.
Pierre looked around at the others.
"She's right," Jean said.
"I'll help take her out," said Cesar.
"If you don't mind, I'd rather be somewhere else," said Abdul. "I don't think I could take it."
"Sure," said Pierre. "Doc and I can handle it, and Jean can run the EVA controls for us."
Amalita had been placed in the storage locker in a fetal position, so she was relatively easy to move
around on the deck, but it was a close fit through the passageway holes. She was still in her spacesuit,
since Doctor Wong had not bothered to examine her further after he had removed her helmet and found
the broken neck. Seiko closed down the star physics console and dimmed the star image table as they
brought Amalita to the Science Deck.
"I'll hold Amalita while you get your suits on," she said softly, taking the frosty burden from them.
"The EVA lock is ready," said Jean. She got up from the EVA console, helped Pierre and Cesar with
their suits, and took them through the checkout sheet, trying to be as careful and thorough as Amalita had
always been.
"Magni-stiction boots . . ." said Jean. Pierre flicked a switch in his chest console that rearranged the
pseudorandom pattern of the magnetic monopoles in the soles of his boots so they matched up with the
hexagonal pattern of monopoles built into the inner plates and hull of Dragon Slayer. His boots clanged
onto the deck, twisted outward at a 30-degree angle.
"Check," he said, then clumped into the EVA lock. He turned around and helped Cesar maneuver
Amalita's body in through the door.
"Don't forget your safety lines," said Jean. "There are some weird gravity fields out there." Pierre
attached a line to himself and another to the ring in Amalita's suit. Just then a dark head appeared in the
passageway hole in the deck.
"I had to say goodbye," said Abdul. He forced himself to look at Amalita's badly burned face. His left
hand reached into the singed hair and held it lightly, while his right hand took two kisses from his lips and
placed them softly on the frosted blisters of Amalita's closed eyelids. He turned and dove down the
passageway, leaving behind clusters of teardrops moving upward in the swirling air.
Jean cycled them through.
"The best place to release her is near the viewport window," Pierre said as he climbed out the outer
lock. He care-
fully attached his magni-stiction boots to the hull, then shifted his safety line to a tiedown. "She'll be
pulled outward to the ring of compensator masses and be gone in a flash of plasma. The last thing we
want is to have her, or 'pieces' of her, in orbit."
They moved carefully over the hull to a point near the viewport. They were standing at the south pole of