The next sound came from the far side of the Living Drum: a sharp metallic crack, followed by a long sliding scrape. Benji set down Imani's water and ran toward it.
"Don't," Nessa said.
He had already reached the passage.
Mara caught her feed hose clear of the bench and followed Kit. The dry trunk descended four shallow steps to the Bore Room, narrow enough that they had to go in single file. Nessa's carrier lines ran in a protected overhead guide. Benji's did not. He was dragging a loop across the floor, moving too quickly to gather it.
At the far end of the trunk a service cabinet had come away from the wall. Its lower corner jammed against the hatch frame. Beyond it Mara saw the Bore Room's lights swaying on their flexible mounts.
"Stop at the hatch," she said.
Benji bent to pull a line from beneath the cabinet.
It moved.
Only the width of a finger. His left arm vanished between the cabinet and the frame, and the sound he made was too high and too short to be a word.
Kit reached him first. He dropped to one knee, got his shoulder against the cabinet and pushed. Mara heard him grunt. Benji's arm came free. He fell backward, the skin on his wrist peeling away in a smooth white strip, and Kit caught him by the collar before his head struck the step.
"Back," Mara said. "Both of you."
The frame made a popping sound.
She saw the problem then: not the cabinet alone. A cable tray had dropped behind it, loading the top. The cabinet was a wedge in a changing space. Kit had lifted one edge enough for the wedge to turn.
"Kit, down!"
He pushed Benji toward her.
The cabinet came sideways through the hatch.
Mara grabbed Benji's shirt and fell backward up the steps. Metal struck metal with a deafening flat crash. Kit disappeared below the cabinet's edge. The passage shook. Something hit Mara's mask and drove it hard into her cheek.
For a second the world was her own breath, the hiss of a disturbed seal, Benji's weight across her thighs. She pressed the mask tight with her left hand. The seal seated again.
"Kit."
No answer.
She shoved Benji gently aside and crawled down. One of Kit's boots protruded from the gap beneath the cabinet. The other lay twisted outward. His face was visible against the hatch sill, eyes open, mouth working inside the mask.
He could not draw a full breath.
"Hester. Injury. Bring the lift bags. Treatment pack."
"Coming."
Mara put her fingers on Kit's shoulder. "Look at me."
His eyes rolled toward her. He tried to speak. Blood spread into the cloth over his lower chest and ran beneath the cabinet.
"Don't move," she said.
It was a stupid thing to say. He could not move. She said it because her hand needed to know there was still a person attached to it.
Nessa crouched beside her, pale with anger. "The frame is taking the tray. If you lift this side, it drops the other."
"What's behind the tray?"
"A brace to the service spine. Not the hull."
"Can it come down clear?"
Nessa looked through the gap above the cabinet. "Not all of it."
Mara followed her gaze. A yellow-painted post had bent against the inside of the room. If they could take that load, the cabinet might rotate without shearing through Kit. Her tablet was trapped under her hip. She dragged it out with one hand, called up the drawing, ignored the screen's protest at the blood on her glove.
"Hester, don't bring bags. Bring the short ram. Red case."
"Already have it."
Leonie appeared at the top of the steps. She took one look and went back. Mara heard her opening cupboards in the Living Drum. Benji was trying to stand. His wrist had begun to change, translucent tissue pulling the loose skin back toward the injury.
"Sit down," Nessa told him.
"I need to shut the return—"
"Point."
He pointed. Nessa reached above Mara and turned a lever, freeing the line trapped under the cabinet from its wall guide. Benji sagged against the step.
Kit's fingers closed around Mara's wrist. His glove was sticky. She leaned close enough to hear him.
"Can't—"
"We're lifting it."
He shook his head violently. A pink froth had appeared at the edge of his mouth.
"Don't talk. I hear you."
Hester pushed the red case past Leonie and crawled down behind them. There was no room for four people. Mara flattened herself beside the cabinet, one knee in the blood, and took the ram from the case. Nessa braced its foot against the hatch sill.
"Not there," Mara said. "It slides off. Lower. Against the corner."
"That's not square."
"It will be under load. Hold it."
She fitted the head beneath the bent post. Hester worked the hand pump while Mara watched the contact. The ram took weight. Kit's hand clenched again and then loosened.
"Stop."
The post lifted a fraction.
Mara looked under the cabinet. Kit's coveralls had gathered around the trapped part of his body. She could not see what had been crushed, only the spreading blood and the wrong angle of his hip.
"Another half stroke."
Hester moved the handle.
The cable tray settled onto the ram. The cabinet's corner scraped along the sill, then rose. Mara got her shoulder underneath it. Nessa caught her belt before she could commit her whole weight.
"It won't hold you," Nessa said.
"It doesn't have to. Hester, keep pumping."
She pulled Kit by the harness a hand's width. He screamed inside his mask. It was worse muffled, a sound being kept where it should have escaped.
Mara stopped.
Leonie came down beside them with a rigid drag sheet. "Slide him onto this."
"He's caught."
"Where?"
Mara looked. A strap, not flesh. One of the equipment loops had pinned itself beneath a bent lip. She cut it, heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her eyes. The cut end snapped loose.
"Now."
They pulled together. Kit came out, leaving part of his coveralls behind. Hester held the pump steady until all four were clear, then backed away on her elbows. The ram settled with a little tick, taking the load. It held.
Mara looked at Kit.
She had seen worse injuries. She could not remember one at that moment.
His lower ribs had folded inward on one side. Blood soaked his pants and ran off the drag sheet. His left hand pawed at his chest as though something had got inside his clothes. Kit, who could make a work crew laugh while setting a broken leg, was making a small repeated noise that had no intention in it.
Leonie pressed a dressing against his side. "Treatment bench. Now."
They dragged him up the steps. His head bumped once against the sheet's edge and Mara put her hand beneath it, apologizing to him in a low, endless murmur. At the table Jonah was pulling dishes onto the floor to clear a surface. Imani stood frozen beside the bench, her own mask hissing in quick shallow bursts.
"Move," Hester said, and Imani moved.
They lifted Kit onto the cleared table. Leonie cut his clothes. Mara held the dressing until told to change hands. The blood was very warm even through the glove. Kit tried to sit up and could not. His eyes went to Mara, then the ceiling, then Mara again.
"Hester, call Sal," she said. "Immediate critical retrieval."
Hester was already talking.
Leonie worked without wasted motion. She opened Kit's pack, found what she needed, used the oxygen feed, examined the wound. Her face tightened. She took Mara's wrist and moved it to a new point of pressure.
"Hold here. Harder."
Mara pressed. Kit's fingers scrabbled at the table.
"Sorry," she told him.
Leonie looked at the monitor. She looked again at his chest. For one extraordinary second she seemed angry with it.
"How long to the surface?" she asked.
"Ninety minutes. If we leave now."
"He doesn't have ninety minutes."
Hester's voice stopped. Mara heard Sal calling over the speaker, asking for the injury report again. Nobody answered him.
"What do you need?" Mara asked Leonie.
"More than I have."
She continued working. That was the worst of it. She did not stop, did not pronounce a boundary and step back. Her hands kept doing useful things while Kit died beneath them.
Benji stood on the far side of the table. His injured wrist had closed into a new shape, smooth and swollen, the old blood drying above it. He pressed it against his shirt as if he could hide it from Kit.
Kit saw it anyway.
His eyes moved from Benji's hand to the lines at Leonie's waist.
He caught the front of Mara's coveralls.
"That," he said.
She bent closer. "What?"
He tried to lift his hand. It would not leave the table. His gaze stayed on Leonie.
Leonie understood. Mara saw it in her face and tried, uselessly, to put herself between the physician and Kit.
"Leonie."
"I heard him."
Kit made the word again. Not clear, not complete. The hand on Mara's chest tightened until she could feel his nails through the glove.
Benji pulled a closed medical branch from the wall. The liquid inside was pale gold in the ceiling light.
Leonie did not take it yet.