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Peter Watts 277 Blindsight
"It won't." She didn't take her eyes from her windows.
"How do you—"
"It can't. If it had spring-loaded any more firepower we'd have
seen a change in thermal and microallometry." A false-color
landscape rotated between us, its latitudes measured in time, its
longitudes in delta-mass. Kilotons rose from that terrain like a
range of red mountains. "Huh. Came in just under the noise lim
—"
Sarasti cut her off. "Robert. Susan. EVA."
James blanched. "What" Cunningham cried.
"Lab module's about to impact," the vampire said. "Salvage the
samples. Now." He killed the channel before anyone could argue.
But Cunningham wasn't about to argue. He'd just seen our death
sentence commuted: why would Sarasti care about retrieving
biopsy samples if he didn't think we stood a chance of escaping
with them The biologist steadied himself, braced towards the
forward hatch. "I'm there," he said, shooting into the bow.
I had to admit it. Sarasti's psychology was getting better.
It wasn't working on James, though, or Michelle, or—I couldn't
quite tell who was on top. "I can't go out there, Siri, it's—I can't
go out there…"
Just observe. Don't interfere.
The ruptured inflatable collided impotently to starboard and
flattened itself against the carapace. We felt nothing. Far away
and far too near, the legions thinned across Rorschach's surface.
They disappeared through mouths that puckered and dilated and
magically closed again in the artefact's hull. The emplacements
fired passionlessly at those who remained.
Observe.
The Gang of Four strobed at my side, scared to death.
Don't interfere.
"It's okay," I said. "I'll go."
The open airlock was like a dimple in the face of an endless cliff.
I looked out from that indentation into the abyss.
*