"The code," Androv was saying. "It is one-nine-nine-nine."
Vance stared at the small device in his flight glove. It had a number keypad and a liquid crystal display.
"You have ten seconds," Tanzan Mino said. The image was ghostly, but the voice still rang loud and clear.
He began fumbling with the device, but the numbers kept eluding him, slipping around the thick fingers of his gloves. Finally he caught the 1. Above him the screens were still scrolling. Eight seconds.
Suddenly the cockpit seemed to sway, an air pocket that
even the Daedalus' advanced structural mode control system couldn't damp out entirely. Now Androv was talking to Petra, going for a sliver more altitude. Seven seconds.
"Michael." Eva was watching, her face still drawn from the acceleration. "Is it—?"
"It's the gloves. The damned gloves. I'm . . ." Then he punched in the first 9.
In the back of his mind he noted that the cockpit was adjusting as Daedalus rotated, increasing attitude . . .
He got another 9. But his grip on the "calculator" was slipping, pressing toward the floor as the G-forces of acceleration weighed against him. He checked the screens again and saw that three seconds remained.