The Blue Marble Gambit Read Free Page B

extended. “Know
what this is?"
    The
Orlyx answered. “A quaintly
primitive grasper, with a single opposable digit."
    I
clenched it shut. “Not quite. This is a fist."
    Then
I reached up and pulled the handle.
    As
my five-fingered hand used its admittedly primitive opposable thumb to grip and
pull, the Mainer's ruby eyestalks vibrated and a
boiler - the Mainer's weapon of choice - was suddenly rising in a cradle of
slim purple tentacles. But it was
too late.
    The
handle made a loud cracking noise, which was suddenly repeated, much more
loudly and with much greater sincerity, as the viewport broke free. A roaring hurricane erupted and it was
as if the CasinoPlex had taken a deep breath eons before and been waiting all
this time to exhale. To make up for
the delay it now was trying with impressive success to vomit itself into space. The distant thunk of autodoors closing
far off would change nothing here.
    I'd
dropped to the steel floor just after pulling, which avoided the brace of
boiler bolts the Mainer managed to trigger, but which also took me away from
the handle. Now the rushing air
dragged me along the smooth floor. I glanced about idly for a handhold, but saw none, as expected. I'd looked earlier.
    The
Crunchies fought and clawed and ended up in a clump, madly grabbing each other,
which did them no good because they were all headed Out . A heart-warming cacophony of trills and
bleats and squawks and shrieks sounded over the wind as they rolled in an
interspecies ball and then popped out the hole in a messy, tangled mass. Millions of years of evolution from
three different worlds, nicely disposed of in one fell
swoop.

Out
into black space
    harvest of alien bugs
    die , headpickers, die!
    Maybe
not haiku in the traditional sense, but it worked for me.
    I
took a moment to exult, but only a moment, for now that my head would remain
attached, and the kill team was out of the way, another crisis moved to the top
of the list: hurtling into outer space without spacesuit or air.
    The
floor between me and the hissing, sucking exit was
smooth metal. The sides of the hole
were too far away to grab. I could
see, with startling clarity, a few scattered stars. Unless I thought of something quickly,
I'd be joining them.
    I
thought. Quickly. Nothing came to mind.
    I
thought a little harder, and even more quickly. Still nothing. Then I saw with some surprise that I was
out of time.
    Sure
enough, I popped out the hole. Deep
space, I immediately noticed, was cold and tingly, and rather stung a bit.
     

 
    CHAPTER 2 . HEADLOCK
     
    As
I drifted away from the station in a slow spin, I felt a cold plucking sting
along my arms, legs, all my skin. Vac flush, I knew. Bye bye, capillaries! Adios, alveoli!
I'll be along shortly!
    The
axial fibers built into my Fist-issue jumpsuit tightened and squeezed, trying
to offer some protection from the depressurization of vacuum. Death in vacuum is actually not
instantaneous, but takes just long enough for Mother Nature to make a point
which she wants to be sure you have time to appreciate: Idiot! Primates should stay on their
planet!
    I
began appreciating whole new subtleties of this apparently simple edict; with
the encouragement of exposure to vacuum it seemed to take on vast new meanings
and a complex multi-layer structure which coherently
summarized all of human existence into one brief line of extraordinary
simplicity and genius. I realized
that I was only just beginning to understand the elegant vastness of this
simple axiom, while simultaneously and regretfully experiencing the
circumstances leading to my extremely temporary enlightenment.
    At
the same time I was expecting the next moments to be both impressively gruesome
and remarkably uncomfortable. The
mixture of a soft pressurized human body with the unpressurized environment of
space can be spectacular, at least to a disinterested observer, which I
unfortunately was not. I tried to adopt
a positive mind-set about exploding. I failed