“Okay. I’m going to be faster than that.” I calm my mind and remember my last chronometer setting. I flex the fingers of my right hand, limbering them up for the job of turning my chronometer dial. I bunch up the sleeve of my left arm at my elbow and pull it as tight as I can before folding it over and pinning it down on the armrest. I unhook my safety belt and wrap the left side around my arm and the armrest for good measure, pulling it as tight as I can. The makeshift tourniquet won’t be completely airtight, but I hope it will buy me a little time. I float out of the seat slightly, but that is to my advantage as I don’t want to arrive embedded in the cushion. I wrack my brain for the proper time to set, double-checking the indication on the visor’s display. “Claire, how long have I been out here?”
“This excursion is currently at thirty-eight minutes. You have approximately six minutes of useful oxygen remaining. Please return to your vessel.”
“I’m trying. Believe me, I’m trying.” I take one last deep breath and take in the vista of the planet below me, then exhale all of the air I can out of my lungs and reach for the glove latch on my chronometer hand. It sticks at first and I hear air starting to escape out of the useless crack in the seal. I curse it mentally and force it the rest of the way open, then twist the glove loose, letting it tumble away into the blackness. My left hand immediately begins to tighten as the nitrogen and other gases in it begin to swell. I clamp it on the bare metal of the armrest, ignoring the cold, and dial my chronometer with my other hand as fast as I can. The bulky fingers of my glove lack the dexterity I need so I miss the hour mark and end up on two, but it’s good enough. I jam the directional slider to the back position. The whole process has only taken seconds but feels like an eternity. As the air is sucked out of my helmet, my vision starts to darken. I close my eyes and press the pin.
<><><>
I crash into the console chair from three inches above it. The back of my head bounces roughly off the headrest, but it’s the happiest sensation of my life. My helmet is gone. My bulky space suit is gone. I’m sprawled out in the chair in my jeans and sneakers, gulping air. I lift my left hand to inspect it. It’s swollen and still cold to the touch, but I can move it. The flesh of my palm that was red and beginning to blister from the Hindenburg fire is now an ashen white, but as I probe it gently with my other hand, color begins to return. I press it to my abdomen to try to warm it and rock myself up and out of the chair.
Still alive.
I’ve come back two hours. I’m perhaps an hour ahead of Viznir and myself, but I don’t know who else has yet to arrive. The window chair where I last saw the Admiral is vacant, as is the catwalk. I check the pod corridor and find three escape pods still in position. I breath a sigh and stagger past the one designated for Viznir and me. I’ve lost much of my anger in the joy of my escape, but some of it returns when I look at the airlock window where Viznir will scribble his message. I don’t tarry, however. I proceed to the next available pod and immediately climb inside.
The interior of the escape pod is roughly a sphere, with one bank of controls that has a pilot chair and two other cushioned benches that occupy space between tiny porthole windows. I crawl to the first cushioned bench and lie down, still cradling my injured left arm. I have no other plan in mind, but I’m determined that whomever this pod belongs to will not be leaving the station without me. I spot a first-aid sign on one of the cabinet doors and scrounge through the cabinet for something that will help me. I find a bunch of syringes and pills with names I don’t recognize but also a tube of burn cream and some gauze and bandages. I shove the rest back into the cabinet and take my discoveries back to my bench. The burn cream stings on my now open blisters but once I have my hand treated and bandaged, the discomfort dulls to a subtle throbbing. I curl back up on the bench, pulling one knee onto the cushioned surface and letting my other foot dangle to the floor.
At first I’m alert for the sound of voices, but after a few minutes my body begins to come down from the adrenaline and exertion of my last hours. Staring out the miniscule window at the silent array of stars, my eyelids have almost drifted closed when footsteps clomp their way into the hallway. I open my eyes and listen to the locker being opened and closed and someone struggling their way into a space suit. A few minutes later the clomping is at the entrance to the pod. I let my head roll toward the doorway and the white, glass-domed figure of Harrison Wabash.
“Travers. What are you doing here?” His voice is amplified by the helmet’s speaker system.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Where is your guide? You should have your own pod assigned.”
I shake my head. “Nope. I’m going. With you.”
“You’ll need a pressure suit.”
“I’m not getting out of this capsule. Don’t try to make me.”
Wabash stares at me for a moment then disappears back into the hall. When he returns, he’s bearing another space suit and helmet in his arms. He deposits it near my foot at the base of the bench. “Here. The Admiral decided he won’t be using his.” He turns back to the control panel and presses something. The pod door slides closed and he latches it. My body relaxes as the seal around the door inflates. I sit up and start to put my legs through the pants of the space suit. Wabash has strapped himself into the pilot’s chair and actuated more of the systems. Through the pod door window I see the space station doors slam shut, and a moment later, the pod gives a shudder as the locks are released. We are jettisoned from the side of the station and I have to hold onto the wall to keep from being flung from my bench.
Our descent is basically a controlled plummet. I have the forethought to put my helmet on before my gloves this time and the whole process goes a lot smoother. The entry through the atmosphere is shaky and loud. After the silence of space, the noise is harsh and unwelcome, but it fades to a steady whistling after we penetrate the upper atmosphere. The display on my helmet lights up with the Digi-Com logo that breaks apart into a hundred stars and sends a musical jingle around the helmet’s speaker system.
“Claire?”
“What’s that?” Wabash turns his head from the controls.
“Nothing. Just seeing if anyone else was in my helmet with me.”
Wabash studies me. “Your eyes are red. Looks like you might have busted a capillary or two. You feeling okay?”
“I got a little more of the ‘outer’ part of outer space than I wanted.”
Wabash’s eyes are questioning so I explain how Viznir left me and the Admiral blew up the space station. At this Wabash’s face hardens.
“He told me he would wait till the station had been vacated.”
I study the guide’s face. “What’s your plan now? How will you get through the next gate without your racer?”
“Silas gave me his bracelet.”
“He got it off? How?”
“He broke his hand. He said it wouldn’t matter now anyway.”
I recall the Admiral’s right hand resting in his jacket. “Wow, that’s hardcore.” I look out the window at the gray clouds whipping past. “What’s down here that he’s so scared of?”
Wabash goes back to his controls. “Unpleasant realities.”
I look out the window at the planet and wonder what could possibly be bad enough to make the Admiral opt for suicide rather than face it. I’m still on a high from my recent escape from death, but as the surface of the planet nears, my apprehension begins to return.
The capsule jolts and shakes but seems to be slowing. Another few seconds and I’m sure of it. I climb to my feet and peer out the porthole. Something is streaming from the top of the pod. A parachute? I never even heard it deploy.
We impact the ground with a thud and a cloud of dust, but I’ve had worse jolts from waves on boats. Wabash checks the monitor on his control panel one more time, then opens the door. The pressure in the capsule changes and my suit expands slightly. My first view of the alien world comes as Wabash clears the doorway.
The ground
is dark and gritty, but loosely packed. Jagged rocky outcroppings ring the valley and there are eight other pods partially buried in the soft earth in a semicircle around us. Tracks from the nearest pod lead into the reddish-sunshine-lit archway of some type of monument. Beyond the arch are a man-made wall and a tower with a dozen other structures jutting from the ground at interesting angles. Beyond that, two enormous cooling stacks stab at the sky. The whole facility is silent and vacant. Even the stacks show no sign of steam or smoke. The landscape is as silent as a Cubs fan at the World Series. Was the Admiral scared of being bored to death?
“We’ll need to head for the entrance to the mine.” Wabash points to the archway. “The rest of the compound is underground.”
“What do they mine here?”
“What did they mine here,” Wabash says. “This place hasn’t been operated in twenty years.”
“Okay. What did they mine here?”
“Colmetracite. It was an element they discovered that could power starship engines better than any of our fusion technology.”
“What then? Did it run out?”
“No. It had been claimed.”
A whistling noise above us makes me look up to see the next pod making its descent to the surface. It impacts fifty yards from us, and when the door opens, an unusual looking creature leaps from the opening. The space suit has four bulky legs and a long tapered helmet fixed around the neck. The creature shakes once and then barks, the amplified sound echoing off the ridges around us. I smile and make my way over to the capsule in time to help Jonah hand out his pack and the dog’s saddle bags. He has his snail helmet attached to the back of his space suit, so for the first time, I can get a look at his tumble of dirty-blonde hair.
“What’s up, buddy? Haven’t seen you in a while.” I give him a hand out of his capsule, and the dog head-butts me with his helmet in his attempt to lick at my other hand.
“You didn’t meet me after the airship,” Jonah says.
“No. I’m sorry about that. I ran into a friend I had to say hi to.”
Jonah nods and I get the sense that I’m forgiven. “Do you know what we have to get?” His voice is high and excited.
“Here? No, actually. I still need to figure mine out.”
“I have to get ore.” He holds out his hand and has one of the tiny pea-sized dots floating in it. He expands it and it immediately shows his objective, a black rock with an unusual strand of green running through it.”
“You’re good at that. I couldn’t get mine to cooperate at all.”
Jonah closes his ball of light back to pea size again and starts to slip it into his pocket, but freezes in the act and points to the sky with his other hand. “Look!”
I turn skyward as bits of orange start streaking through the atmosphere. The space station is coming apart. A green-and-white striped parachute appears in a patch of clear sky, then the last capsule bursts through the bottom of the gray scattered clouds below it.
Viznir.
As the capsule sinks toward us, I turn to Wabash. “You should get Jonah indoors. I’ll meet up with you in a minute.”
Wabash studies the spacecraft briefly, then puts an arm out to help Jonah with his things. “What are you going to do?”
I clench my good hand into a fist and move toward the falling pod. “I have some business to attend to.”
24
“People often worry about the effects of time travelers on the nature of time, but rarely ponder the reverse. Time changes a traveler. We can never stay what we were. Change is the price we all pay for our years.”–Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 1980
The cloud of dust has yet to settle when I reach the fallen pod. It’s sunk at a tilt with its door angled upward toward the sky. The door seal hisses as it equalizes the pressure. Viznir is struggling to push it open because of the angle. I approach from the blind side of the door and he has only managed to get one leg out of the capsule when I step into view. His gaze is concentrated on the blackened earth, but he looks up when my shadow falls across him. He doesn’t have time to register surprise because I kick him hard in the chest and send him flying back into the capsule.
Viznir’s body hits the back of the pod with a satisfying thud. I swing into the doorway after him and straddle his body. He moves in surprise, but I kick the face of his helmet, bouncing it off the porthole window frame.
“Surprised to see me, asshole?” I kick his helmet again for emphasis and this time a crack radiates across the visor. My fists are clenched, ready to swing, but Viznir’s face falls and he starts to curl up and whimper. It makes me pause.
“Please, just don’t kill me—” the rest is swallowed up in a sob and his body shakes. “Or—or do it quick.” His face is contorted in pain or sorrow or fear. I’m not certain which. Whatever he’s doing, he’s not fighting.
“Why did you try to kill me, you son of a bitch?” I reach for his chest and grasp the fabric of his suit.
Fight me, you coward. Give me an excuse.
Viznir flinches. I shake him but he’s dead weight in my hands.
“They made me!” Viznir glances at me cautiously but then stares at the wall, still not ready to meet my eyes. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“The committee? They have something on you? Geo? Who?”
His face twitches at Geo’s name and I follow that track. “What, they bet on me to die? Somebody put a fix in? You could have killed me a hundred times during this race. Why now?”
Viznir shifts under me and I take a step back. I snatch both of our packs and rummage around in his until I find the pistol. When I grab it, I also spot Dr. Quickly’s journal. I yank it from the bag and wave it at Viznir’s face. “And this? What did you plan to do with this?”
He flinches again and his eyes flit to the pistol in my other hand. I fling his pack out the door and send the journal and my pack out after it, still aiming the pistol with my awkward bandaged hand. With the bulky gloves on, my finger barely fits inside the trigger guard, but Viznir doesn’t seem likely to make me test it.
“They have my sister.” His voice is quiet, just loud enough for the microphone in the helmet to pick up. “They’re going to kill her now.”
“Who does?”
“I don’t really know who they are. They’re men my dad knows. He owes them a lot of money.”
“The gambling.”
Viznir finally looks me in the eyes. “They said if I want to keep her alive, I had to do a job for them.”
“Getting rid of me.”
“I couldn’t say no. . . . They gave me the training. They rigged my profile in the guide pool. I never actually took the exam. I would have, but they just made it so I passed. They’ve got people inside the committee.”
“Why? Why me?”
“I don’t know. They just said it had to be here. After we finished at the Academy.”
I look down at his pitiful posture, curled up in the bottom of the pod. “Well I’m not going to just let you kill me. That—that sucks about your sister. And your dad. But I don’t plan on dying here.”
Viznir shakes his head. “They’re going to kill me now anyway. They’re going to kill all of us.”
I’m not sure if he’s talking about just his family or all the racers. “What else do you know?”
Viznir merely shakes his head and goes back to staring at the wall. I climb out of the capsule and upend Viznir’s pack onto the ground. As the contents scatter in the dirt, I spot Mym’s degravitizer and my water bottle. He hasn’t bothered with Abe’s tool kit, but I’m grateful now for the wind that made me stuff the chronometer schematics into my pants pocket. I locate his extra ammunition for the pistol and stuff that into my pack along with the journal and the rest of my belongings. I toss Viznir’s empty pack at him through the pod door and leave the rest of his belongings on the ground. “I’m taking your gun.” He doesn’t make any objection. I stare at him, curled up at the base of the pod and another thought occurs to me. “How were you going t
o get home once I was dead?”
Viznir doesn’t look up. He merely talks toward the wall. “It doesn’t matter. It won’t work now.”
I shoulder my pack and walk away from the pod, my oversized boots leaving oval prints in the soft dirt. I’m about halfway to the monument archway when I hear the gunshots. What are they shooting at? I run for the arch. The spacesuit inhibits me, especially loaded down by my pack, but I can still jog. I switch Viznir’s pistol to my good hand and flip off the safety as I peer around the corner of the columns.
Beyond the monument, the wall of the compound is open at the center with a paved road exiting and disappearing under drifts of the soft black dirt. Inside the compound is a courtyard with various vehicles assembled in rows. A shadow moves beyond the dusty windows of a truck, but I can’t tell who it is. Then I hear the barking.
I jog along the road, forced to turn with my whole torso so I can see past the narrow confines of my visor. Passing the first vehicles, I spot the first sign of trouble. Empty sections of a space suit are strewn on the ground. The sleeve of one arm is ripped and the face shield of the helmet has been shattered. The barking starts again from my left. I cross the open space between the vehicles and jog the length of the wall to that side. There’s a narrow metal door at the end of the wall that has been wrenched from its hinges, and I find a handful of shell casings on the ground.
I peek around the corner into the adjoining courtyard and duck inside, keeping my gun at the ready. The buildings have been constructed with a combination of man-made materials and hunks of the black rock formations from around the valley. Narrow windows and odd angles make them seem disjointed like some underground force has wrenched them off their foundations. I follow the barking around the corner to an overturned six-wheeled truck. Barley is out of his space suit. He’s barking and snarling toward a black door in the building next to me. There’s blood smeared on the wall and the distinct impression of a hand.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 89
