Later, when he managed to get the straps off and tried to move, he fell painfully onto the tilted deck. One of his eyes felt sticky. He rubbed at it and his hand was smeared with blood.
He shuffled around in a stumbling circle. Minor damages could have been repaired. But this—the ship was peeled open in glaring strips like a breakfast cannister. A cold wind moaned through the ship that was now nothing but a metal sieve. A hazy light filtered down and ran off the metal like cold flour rust.
Kelly fell to his knees. "Kew," he whispered. "Lljub, Urdaz—Lakrit...."
The Venusian flower lady was sliced down the middle like a cabbage, and the nitrate bowl was shattered and Kew was dead in a pool of fading green blood.
Smashed into the bulkhead was Lakrit's sulphuric bathtub, and his atmosphere had already filtered away with the wind to wherever it was going. Lljub's pale glow was out for good, and his crystalline heart was as opaque as a dead eye. Only a few pieces of Urdaz's tank were visible, and Urdaz himself had already turned to a powdery food that the wind ate slowly in long trailing streamers.
"What—what in the name of God have I done?" Kelly whispered.
All dead—
No! He slammed at the bulkhead until the warped metal gave and he ran to the control room. The Crew—the Crew—
He stared at the tank.