by Guy Haley
Dariusz licked his lips. They were cracked, the skin flaking. He was unbearably thirsty, his head throbbed with dehydration. He dared not waste his drink, mindful of the walk back and his planned trudge away from the camp. Already he had consumed far more than he had expected to. He took only the smallest sip from his bottle. He ran his moistened tongue over his lips, seeking to soothe them.
He pulled up the tablet on its strap. He squinted at the screen, then let it drop. “A faint one. Deck 30A,” he said.
“One of the upper medium size range?”
Dariusz nodded. “One hundred and fifty colonists per segment.”
Bo sagged, his sense of adventure dwindling as his fatigue grew. “Shall we check it out? How far is it?”
“Three more kilometres, maybe,” said Dariusz. “It’s hard to be sure.”
“That will take us away from the group, well out of radio range,” said Bo. “We’ll be thirteen, fourteen kilometres away.”
“We won’t be long.”
“Are you going to radio in?”
Dariusz stuck out his bottom lip and shook his head. “There’s no need to cause any more argument. It’s just outside the radio’s effective range. We won’t be long.” Dariusz checked the radio. It looked like Marina hadn’t sent anyone out after all. “They can’t hear us anyway.”
Bo scratched behind his ear. Where they weren’t protected by their smartsuits, their skin was reddening. “Fine by me. Nothing to do but sit around there and wait to die anyway.”
They walked onwards. The segment coalesced, hard black lines resolving themselves from the heat haze. 30A had landed well; furthermore, it had been occupied. The ends of the segment pointed at them like truncated horns, open doors black and uninviting, emergency ladders hanging from them. The number emblazoned across its concave centre was discoloured by heat, but the segment’s fabric appeared sound.
“No sign of damage,” said Bo.
“Not from this distance.”
“And there, the doors are open and one of the ladders has been dropped.”
“I don’t see any movement.”
“I think I can see signs of a camp.” Bo pointed, bringing Dariusz to a halt. “See? Under the vessel, in the shade...”
Dariusz ran his fingers over the touch screen. “No radio broadcasts except the beacon.”
“I can definitely see signs of a camp.” Bo was more certain.
“We are too far out to be sure.”
“Let’s get closer, then.” Bo strode on ahead without waiting for agreement..
The Dane had been correct. Scattered under the segment were empty bottles, ration packs and makeshift bedding. The rope ladder hanging from the door swayed listlessly in the hot wind, banging into the hull.
“A camp.” Bo spoke without triumph. He simply stated what he saw, in a very Scandinavian way. He was free of the unease that had settled upon Dariusz. “A lot of people... Hello?” he shouted through cupped hands. His shout was too loud, a rebuke to the desert for its silence, and the desert did not take kindly to it.
“Shh,” said Dariusz.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said irritably. “Because.” He took a bigger swig than he intended from his bottle. His load had become worrying light. Thank God they had found the supplies at 9A.
Dariusz stepped carefully under the deck. The temperature underneath was little lower than out in the sunlight, but Dariusz welcomed the shade. The ground was disturbed, emergency supplies scattered. Of the colonists, there was no sign.
“Why didn’t they use the tablets?”
Dariusz shrugged. “Who knows? I’m going inside. Check around the segment for footprints,” he said. “It is possible they walked away, or have gone in search of others. Find their trail, and we can find out which way they went.”
Bo nodded, and set off at a slow jog, eyes to the ground.
Dariusz checked over the segment’s skin as he walked back to the ladder. The smooth carbons of its surface were heat-scored, but he could see no sign of major damage.
He reached the ladder and grabbed it. His weight stilled it. The silence was welcome; the noise had been too similar to the clacking of bones.
He climbed inside. The interior was dark, and he paused in the bright doorway for his eyes to adjust. Presently, he moved forward.
The same was true of Deck Segment 30A as had been of their own; many failed hibernation pods, some open and stinking to reveal husks of occupants long dead, some closed, holding others no doubt more recently deceased, some open and empty.
Dried splashes of pseudo-amniotics encrusted the surfaces. There, footprints? He looked closely. A lot of footprints. Where were the people?
He clambered awkwardly over the sarcophagi. In space and under rotation, the outer circumference of the joined segments formed the floor. The segments landed side on when ejected, if they landed correctly, and so Dariusz’s floor was what had once been the forward wall, and the curved walls had been, on the ship, the ceilings and the floor. The segments were not well designed for such an emergency, he thought. They were difficult to move through, there was minimal equipment on them, and their position on the ground was inconvenient to survivors. Jettisoning the colonists’ decks was and always had been intended as an action of last resort, an affordable failsafe should the ship’s systems malfunction once it reached its destination. Jettisoning presupposed a planet to land upon, and at least one other ship in close enough attendance to perform rescue duty. If these conditions were not met, then the colonists would not survive, so why spend the money? It was callous, but then so much of what the Pointers instigated was callous. He estimated just under half the sarcophagi had successfully opened. Sixty, seventy people, perhaps more.
He heard a sound, a scrabbling that stopped as soon as it had begun, perhaps also a sob. It was hard for him to be sure. He was making a racket clambering over the sarcophagi, his shoes squeaking on the smooth lids where they were not coated in dried fluid. He wished he could move with more stealth, but he could not.
A tunnel led off to the right. All but the smallest decks had subdecks, concentric circles of sleeping colonists; two, in this instance. The subdeck was pitch black, random stripes of red light reflecting from sarcophagus lids. He paused, considering whether the stranger had gone that way. He had little desire to follow.
He caught sight of movement ahead. A hand flashed, a pair of shod feet scrabbled over the curve of a sarcophagus lid. The sobbing returned loudly. Dariusz stumbled and cursed. “Wait! Wait!” he shouted.
He rounded the curve furthest from the doors, where it was darkest, before growing rapidly lighter from the daylight spilling through the second door. He caught up to the fleeing colonist near the exit, framing the stranger in brightness that prevented Dariusz from making anything other than a silhouette.
“Wait! Wait!”
The figure was weeping, backing toward the door. Dariusz came closer, hands outstretched. A woman: a young woman, shaven-haired and jumpsuit-clad, as anonymous as all of them.
“Stop, stop! I’m not going to hurt you!” said Dariusz.
She did not respond. He switched from Lingua Anglica to Polish, then German, resorting to Spanish and finally Mandarin. Still there was no response. She was terrified, the tracks of old tears streaking the dirt and amniotics caked on her face.
Something troubled Dariusz. Why did she not jump out of the door, if she was so scared?
Bo shouted from below. Without taking his eyes off the colonist, Dariusz made his way forward to the door. The girl circled away from him. The ladder for this door had been deployed but then pulled up and so Dariusz tossed it out. Shortly, Bo’s head appeared in the doorway, alarmed. Dariusz raised his hand to silence him, too late.
“Dariusz! Dariusz! I... Oh. What’s going on?”
“Hibernation damage, some crash trauma maybe.”
Bo looked back at the ground nervously. “I don’t think so.”
The girl screamed, look
ed frantically from one to the other, then ran at Dariusz. Her nails raked painfully at his sunburned face. The force of her rush bowled him over. He wrestled with her, finally calming her, until she collapsed, weeping, against his chest.
Bo came into the corridor. Dariusz held the young woman. “It’s okay, you’ll be alright.” He waved Bo back. The Dane was agitated; he crouched uncomfortably, anxious to speak.
“Dariusz, listen. They... I think they left. No. I think they tried to run. You’ve got to come and see this. And then we better get the fuck out of here.”
Dariusz held the woman tightly, as much for his own comfort as hers. He felt his own tears threaten. How much had they all lost? How much had he lost? All of it was his doing. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
“I found them out there,” Bo said. They knelt in the doorway, scanning the sand below. The Dane pointed to two messy sets of footprints heading away from the deck in differing directions. Many people. “They go out for about two hundred metres, that one a little further. There’s a few dropped items, nothing that says to me that this was an organised march.”
“What, they ran away?”
Bo looked back into the dark, where the young woman was curled into herself, near catatonic. “What do you think? Look at her. All the people on the ship, in the fucking fleet, man, they were all chosen for their suitability as colonists.” When agitated, Bo spoke proper English. Dariusz struggled to follow it.
“And?”
“Meaning, we’re not talking about easily scared people here. What the hell did you think she saw? Do you think the crash alone could do that to her?” He looked Dariusz dead in the eye. “I saw... I saw an arm. In the sand. I thought it was buried, I bent down to pick it up and, shit. It was just an arm. Lean out; if you lean out, you should be able to see it.”
Dariusz leaned out, hanging from the door. He had to go a fair way, and the strain on his arms was considerable. “I can’t see it.”
“Damn, look, I’ll hold you.” Bo grabbed his wrist.
Dariusz leaned out further. As Bo had said, an arm lay on the sand. It was torn off at the elbow.
“Okay, okay, pull me back in.”
Bo did so.
“What do you think did it? It’s too early for cannibalism,” Bo said, matter-of-factly. “So, what, did they go crazy? Is it some kind of lifeform? There’s oxygen here, there has to be life. Is there something out... Out there?” His eyes slid back to the door. “Shit man, you’re a geoengineer, some of that must come under your specialisation.”
It did. “It’s possible. With a tidally locked world, you’re normally looking at one side permanently blasted, the other permanently frozen. But there’s atmosphere here, there could be heat exchange between the two hemispheres... Obviously there has to be, or we’d have roasted by now. There’s oxygen, it’s not too hot; I don’t see any signs of water, but there could be some. There could be something out there, yes.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Your suggestion was sound,” said Dariusz. “We get the fuck out of here.”
“HOW CAN YOU be sure?” said Bernhardt. “If there were so many of them, why did they not try to contact anyone on their tablets? Maybe there were only one or two of them, not fifty. You said one of the other deck segments had been evacuated –”
“Looked like it had been evacuated,” corrected Bo. He and Dariusz were testy. The sun had been on them for the better part of a day and a half. They had not dared stop on the way back, and had been forced to drag the terrified girl. They stood in a small group in the shade of their camp, Bernhardt at their front. Already he had elevated himself to the role of village headman.
“The distinction is immaterial, we only have the evidence we have. In point of fact, we only have your interpretation of the evidence.” He looked happy with that. Some of the others were nodding.
“EMP, maybe. The crash could have scrambled it all. Maybe they didn’t think of it,” said Bo.
“We’re in some kind of depression here,” said Dariusz. “They could have broadcast and we would not have heard them.”
“Or maybe alien lifeforms ate them?” said Bernhardt. “Come on! There is no complex life in the galaxy besides that on Earth.”
“That we have yet found,” corrected Dariusz.
“Plankton and plants, that’s all.”
“Maybe we just don’t fucking know, Bernhardt, so back the fuck off!” said Bo. “Just take a look at her, she’s terrified out of her mind!”
Bernhardt folded his arms. “We have crashed. It is not surprising. If one of the others on her deck suffered an episode of psychosis, she would be just as terrified as if an alien monster ate them. You have no evidence.”
Bo started toward the older man, stiff-backed and aggressive. Dariusz held out his hand, placing it on the Dane’s chest. Bo stopped, but barely. His nostrils flared. “Fuck, man,” he said.
“Whatever happened, it only adds to my case that we depart. Bo and I went through our liquids far quicker than we expected. I would expect that it has been the same here.”
Sandra took a half-step forward. Her face was angry red, giving way abruptly to white at the edge of her headcloth. “Yes,” she said. “The sun is hot, the wind is dessicating. It is very dry here.”
Marina stood. She had been comforting the girl; they still had no idea of either her name or nationality. “Dariusz?” said Marina.
“From what I’ve seen so far, this is a very dry region. I have seen no sign at all of any kind of hydrological activity, which suggests it’s either rare or never happens at all. We have to get out of here. I disagree with Bernhardt. With the tablets, they’ll find us almost as easily as if we stay here – if they come. If they don’t come, then we’ll die right where we are, it’s as simple as that.”
“But what about the creatures –” said Sandra.
“Please,” snorted Bernhardt.
Tomek turned to him. “Very well,” he said dully. “What about whatever harmed the other colonists?”
“If they were harmed,” said Bernhardt. “We must stay here, don’t you see? I –”
“We’re on our own, Bernhardt,” said Dariusz. “We have been since the moment we arrived. If there were any hope of rescue, we would have heard of it by now.” He lifted the tablet on its strap.
“You say we’re in a depression –”
“It makes no difference to signals coming from above, does it? There is nothing: no chatter, no messages, no instructions. The rest of the fleet is elsewhere. The Goethe is not with us as planned. We are alone, do you not see that? And we will die alone if we do not act.” He looked over his shoulder. “Now we have other factors to take into consideration. We are leaving.”
“Let’s vote on it,” said Sandra.
“Yes,” said Marina. “We must stick together. Either we all go, or we all stay.”
Dariusz was not happy with that suggestion, but he said nothing. If they voted to stay, then he would just keep arguing with them.
“Agreed?” she said.
There were murmurs of assent from them all; all except Bernhardt, who muttered about the idiocy of democracy.
“All in favour of heading out?” said Marina.
Bo, Dariusz and Sandra put up their hands.
“All in favour of staying?”
Marina and Bernhardt; Tomek too, after some vacillation.
“There we have it,” said Bernhardt. “A tie. I say take that as a vote for the status quo.”
“Maybe not a tie,” said Dariusz. He pushed past Marina and Tomek, to where the young woman sat in the sand by the deck. Dariusz leaned against the carbon hull. Even in the shade, it was uncomfortably hot to touch. “What about you? Do we stay or go?” He said gently.
The woman had calmed since they had found her. She sat listlessly, not shaking or crying, but her face was as devoid of thought as a doll’s.
Dariusz persisted. He knelt by her side, and turned her face towards him. “Stay or go? Stay or g
o?”
A medley of expressions flitted over her face, and her eyes focused. “We can’t stay,” she whispered. “We can’t stay.”
A buzz of conversation started up in the group. Dariusz, encouraged, tried to get the girl to speak some more. From her accent, he thought she might be Polish, and so switched from Lingua Anglica to talk to her in that language. It did no good.
He stood and faced the group, who watched him expectantly. “Four against three,” he said. “We go.”
THEY ATE TOGETHER, slept for a few hours. In the constant light they slept shallowly, dreaming of disaster. They awoke irritable.
They worked steadily, gathering together all they could. When Marina found Sandra tossing away the empty bottles, she made her pick them up, in case they should find water.
“We should save our urine,” she said. “It’s safer to drink each other’s than our own, and only once or twice, or the toxins become too concentrated for our kidneys to filter.”
They made comical expressions of disgust, and Bo joked uncouthly about it, but they did not discount the idea. They were constantly thirsty.
Bernhardt set himself to his tasks with good grace, and his occasional grumbles did not detract from his industry. Sandra asked Bo to show Bernhardt how to make a sled for them each, and Bo agreed. Grudgingly they worked together, and became absorbed in the task.
Sandra seemed pleased with the result. “What is it you do?” asked Dariusz as she unobtrusively observed the two men at work. She gave Dariusz the broadest smile he had seen anyone give on the planet: a dazzling white crescent broke across her sunburned face, completely transforming her features. “A sociologist,” she said with a degree of mischief. She was, he realised, quite beautiful when she smiled. Noticing this, the beauty of another person, had another effect on him; he realised that he was still alive – and that his son might be dead. The myriad pains the crash and the planet had inflicted on him, thus far pushed to the back of his mind, became oppressive. He felt the enormity of his responsibility, he felt the loss of his wife. He feared for his son.
