Chapter 8: Rumblings On the Eddy, Part 2

I made out a door and a port appeared in it. I rolled off the cot, my head splitting and grabbed the hand slide on the door and pulled. The door did not yield. I felt something by my foot and kicked at it; it buzzed angrily.

"Shaw," I shouted, "Shaw!" This was a hell of a way to treat a guest. For one thing----

A head appeared at the window just as a loud Crack! sounded and walls and floor shook.

He entered my quarters.

"Are we having an earthquake?"

"Don't worry about an earthquake my friend, consider how you're going to pay what you owe us."

It was clear that something had happened to our friendship.

"Come, Mica, I need to introduce you toPuffy."

He headed off down this narrow hall. It needed paint. There were violent black streaks on the wall. A crack was quietly, by jerks, opening down one thick tycor wall, like tearing paper.

Behind a desk in a medium sized office room sat a man of medium age.As the door clicked shut, he gestured toward a brown chair drawn up to the shiny metal desk. The man was outlandish in appearance He might have been handsome once, but was now extremely corpulent. His neck strained his collar and wriggled out in great translucent folds. His shirt stretched over his wobbly arms and breasts. His eyes were almost lost in the thin squishy flesh of his face. He was sweating in a way that did not seem healthy. I smelled his sweat mixed with alcohol and old perfume.

He spoke in a high voice: "What's your name? I assume you have a name?"

"Are you Puffy? What is the problem? I need to get back to my boat."

"What is your name?"

I stood up but felt a breathtaking blow to my lower back. Shaw.

"My name is Mica. Why am I being held against my will?"

"Mica Rose, I believe. Arrived here from Marble I think you call it."

"Yes but---"

"You owe us money! You spent yesterday far beyond what you gave Mr. Shaw, and you've had the use of our sleeping quarters overnight without compensating us. Now what are you going to do?"

"I was drugged by your employees in the Hot Room and completely lost consciousness. I never touched that girl, though she certainly offered herself."

"Ah yes , Chambla. I spoke with her-what sort of man are you? Months in solitude and you turn your back on a naked beauty-there must be no juice in you; no manliness."

"Interesting you should mention satisfying desires. I could tell the moment I entered this room that you had had no restraint about satisfying yourself; at this point it's difficult to tell---"

I stopped suddenly as Shaw's fist slammed into the back of my skull. I had been totally unprepared.

Puffy's tiny shiny black eyes resurfaced from the caves they momentarily fled into.

"The fact is, Mica, you'll need to do something to raise money to regain your freedom and the longer you are entertained here, the more you'll be charged.

"Now, I know you have that new flute that you could trade for sufficient cash and even have some left over. You could also probably sell us that strange creature living aboard---"

He wants me to sell him Ronnie? My mind was racing. Surely there was no way I was really in this fellow's debt. But how could I escape his repulsive control?

Shaw's hand reached around and grabbed the medallion around my neck that I had worn from birth. He jerked on it.I instantly saw red, have you ever really seen red? My elbow flew back and connected sharply with his testicles. As he doubled over, there was another tremendous BOOM! And the room went into a kind of crazy parallelogram. We froze. Then a steady rolling rumble and things broke. The floor lifted and the ceiling cracked and the stiff wall panels bent toward each other.

Puffy was now out of sight behind the desk that had pushed him to the wall. Shaw dashed out the door which had popped open and bent permanently and was buckling still. I also rushed out.)

Shouts and shrieks filled the hallway. Creatures who could were running, limping, and crawling in the same direction. I followed them. A loud hissing informed us that the air was flying out into the blackness Outside and already breathing was getting difficult. The walls turned black suddenly and the hissing stopped. Some kind of emergency liner had poured across the ceiling and down the walls turning the hallway into a tunnel which contained the atmosphere but felt stifling none the less.

Most of us, at least the visitors were headed toward the suckdocks and our vessels. I hoped that Ronnie had things ready to go-and then an evil thought entered my mind. Ronnie knew everything about Merkury; how she handled, launching, docking. What if he had decided to be independent and insteadof hitchhiking, being the master of his own flute in one stroke! Surely not. I thought about his teeth, his ability to learn all the complexities and his probing questions about the flute's abilities; all its backup systemsbackup systems.

I sprinted as fast as I could to our dock, but of course I could see nothing through the blacked out double wall. The skippers flooded the hallways and passages to the boats. I remembered mine, but as I reached the end of it, I could see that the suckshaft tunnel was not attached to anything and was waving and flapping around like an empty sleeve.

Where was the flute? Was I too late. Was it my fate to be cast away on this tawdry pleasure palace?

My weight now kept the tunnel from flapping around quite so much with the turbulence of so many departing craft, and I could see through the port at the end-the yellow of the wonderful flute. My heart bounded. Ronnie was holding Merkury in place. If I could hold my breath long enough---

With one hand I opened the exit as close to my body as I could squeeze it and stuck my unprotected head out into the blackness as air whooshed past pulling and pushing me,deafening, almost carrying me out. Ronnie, that wonderful person, stuck his hand out his emergency exit collar and reached toward me. I reached toward his hand, but we were like a pair of socks whipping around in the wind. Finally my waving port swung close enough to reach his arm, but it seemed to suddenly withdraw! Despite the wind whistling past me, I was bathed in sweat. My grip was loosening on the edge as the suckport seemed to swim terribly slowly again towards Ronnie's hand. This time he seized mine in a painful grip and hauled me out of the port and into the collar through which it felt as though I would never fit. I tumbled through and landed bumped and scratched and elated on the deck.

"Ronnie, you are wonderful, I thank you!

"All in a day's work-I warned you not to come here."

"But why did you pull your hand away at first?"

"I didn't want to make it too easy. I figured you might want to suffer a bit." He grinned his hairy snout.