by J. E. Gurley
“You’ve got less than an hour, Huumba,” Jazon called over the comm.
The Terran’s interruption irritated him. He was hot, exhausted, and becoming disoriented. “Yes, yes, I know. I can tell time, Terran. Allow us to continue.”
“Look, we’re picking up some kind of tapping noise through the cable. Are you two causing it?”
“No.”
“It sounds weird,” Jazon added. “Almost like someone banging something against a bulkhead.”
“Impossible,” Huumba protested, looking around. “No one could survive out here.” Even as he spoke, he imagined he could feel the ghosts of his kinsmen around him, begging for revenge. Their rage was seeping into his blood like adrenaline. His own anger had no outlet except through his conversation with the Terran.
The pair continued their search for salvageable parts. As he stood staring at the angry red sun through a tear in the bulkhead, Huumba felt a tapping through the soles of his boots. He looked at Methurish, who in turn, looked at him and shrugged. He, too, had felt the tapping.
“Probably loose debris,” he commented to Methurish, but felt it was more.
They continued and came upon a less damaged section of the ship. He tried to open a bulkhead door, but it wouldn’t budge. “Help me.”
Methurish picked up a metal bar and pried at the door, while Huumba braced himself and used his legs for leverage. Suddenly, the door sprang open and a figure rushed at them. Methurish screamed and threw up his hands to ward off the attacker.
Then Huumba saw that it was a space-suited figure. He spun the suited figure around. “It’s empty,” he shouted, his heart pounding. He looked at Methurish and began to laugh.
“What’s happening?” Jazon demanded.
“Ghosts,” Huumba told him, still laughing, some of the tension draining away through his laughter.
Beyond the door was an auxiliary command center, heavily shielded and relatively undamaged. Several corpses caught without suits and exposed to vacuum had flash-frozen, spilling their body fluids across the deck and bulkheads. Methurish ignored them. When Huumba stared into one of the corpses’ vacuum-distorted face, he wished he had also.
Methurish quickly began to yank components from control panels and handed them to Huumba. Huumba loaded them into protective cases. When the cases were full, he signaled Methurish.
“Enough. We have sufficient for repairs and backups. We must leave.”
“This is strange,” Methurish commented, ignoring Huumba as he examined the door of a storage compartment adjacent to the auxiliary command center.
“What is?” Huumba asked as hooked the cases to his suit.
“This door has been sealed from the inside. See. The welds are fresh.”
Huumba examined the door closely. “What would have been stored here?”
Methurish checked the ship’s schematics on his comp pad. “Excursion suits and oxygen containers.”
Huumba tapped on the door and was startled to feel the vibration of an answering knock through his glove. He placed his faceplate against the door and shouted. “Is there anyone alive?”
“Thank the gods,” a muffled voice answered. “My name is Hramah Mir. I am alone.”
Methurish, his own faceplate pressed to the door had overheard. He became excited, shouting, “Hram! It is Methurish.”
“Methurish, brother of my spouse,” Hramah replied. “By the gods, help me.”
Methurish turned to Huumba. “He is my sister’s brother, a spoiled child but blood kin. We must help him.”
“Do you have a suit?” he asked through the door.
“Yes,” came the frightened reply.
“Put it on. We will find tools and burn the door open.”
“I can do that. I have a torch. Please do not leave me here to die alone.”
Methurish placed a hand on the door. “I will not. I swear it.” He turned to Huumba. “Go. Take the parts back to the ship. I will stay with my kin and wait.”
“We have little time,” Huumba warned.
“I have sworn.” Methurish clenched his fist.
Huumba understood Methurish’s dilemma. “Very well.” He took the cases and left Methurish by the door. As he left the shadows, the heat struck him an almost physical blow. His suit’s air conditioning could barely keep the temperature bearable. He was broiling. The sun was preparing to lash out in retaliation for the nearby battle. Part of the ship was melting. Tiny molten droplets of metal drifted by his faceplate, propelled by the solar winds.
As soon as he entered Occam’s Razor’s airlock, he removed his helmet to cool down. “There is a survivor,” he told Jazon over the comm. “I need a cutting tool.”
“A survivor. How?”
“Never mind how. I need the tool.”
“You realize there isn’t much time,” Jazon cautioned.
“Then do not waste mine,” Huumba argued. He placed the precious cases in a storage locker and located a cutting torch. He strapped it to his suit and struggled to replace his helmet. His arms felt like rubber, and his hands couldn’t grasp the sealing ring. His head pounded.
“You look like feces,” Jazon commented from the comm. “Let me go.”
“It would take too long for you to suit up.”
“Good luck,” Jazon said, as he hit the cycle button.
Huumba said nothing. He was thinking of the hellish void he would have to cross yet again. Chanting mantras from his childhood, he tried to ignore the Eye of the Beast staring at him, its hellish hot breath seeking to roast him as he jetted the short distance to the Dastoran ship.
Now, large globs of molten metal danced in and out of the shadows, making it difficult to find a safe path into the ship. Anyone, even a small drop, would burn a deadly hole in his suit, venting his atmosphere. He had no time for the slow dance of safety. He shut his eyes, called to his gods, and made a quick dash for the derelict.
Hramah Mir had managed to cut the door halfway through by the time he arrived. He handed Methurish the second cutter. “Hurry.”
Heat rolled down the corridor in visible, shimmering pulses like the inside of a blast furnace as another section of the hull surrendered to the sun’s fury. The sounds of metal ripping like torn cloth reached his ears as vibrations through the soles of his boots. Pressure ripples ran down the corridors, as if they were water transferring the hellish heat from one end of the wreckage to the other. Smoke from the cutters filled the corridor before it vented into space. His vision began to cloud as the heat became unbearable. His suit’s air conditioner whined loudly in protest to the added load. Perspiration pooled in his boots and gloves. His suit could not continue to function much longer.
“There is no time, Methurish,” he advised his companion. “We must leave.”
“Then, go. I must stay.”
“I will wait. You will need assistance carrying your kin.”
He watched the cutters slowly melt the doorframe, the dancing flames hypnotizing him with its flickering beauty. Globs of red hot metal filled the corridor, some coalescing into larger drops like a miniature solar system in the making, bouncing around the flames of the cutter, their tiny sun. He felt lost, as if he were drifting.
He noticed a flashing red light and checked his temperature register. The numbers climbed steadily. He knew they meant something important, but the light that blinked in perfect harmony with the pulsing flame of the cutter fascinated him. Now, he could hear the choir singing again from somewhere on the ship. He had to find them.
“I’m coming,” he whispered to them.
He felt hands grabbing him, holding him down. He tried to fight them off, but he was too weak. Finally, he surrendered and felt himself floating free with the Eye of the Beast staring at him with its single, lidless eye.
“Huumba is injured,” Methurish called on the comm. His voice faded in and out due to the pulses of radiation. “I am sending him over. Please retrieve him.”
Jazon saw Huumba’s suited body drifting between the derelict and Occa
m’s Razor. He knew it would take too long to suit up and retrieve him. Handling the controls gently, wishing he had Amissa to guide him, he nudged the ship’s airlock directly opposite Huumba and opened the outer door.
“Got him,” he exclaimed, watching through the monitor as Huumba floated into the airlock. He quickly sealed the outer door and cycled the airlock.
“Ulrich. Harthim. Huumba needs help at the airlock.”
He called Methurish. “We have little time, Methurish. The flares are almost on us. How much longer?” He watched closely as one curl of flare swept through an adjacent piece of wreckage, leaving only wisps of red-hot gas. A second, larger flare was already following in its wake.
“One cutter is out of power. It will take five minutes more.”
Jazon looked at Lyton for confirmation. Lyton shook his head and held up three fingers.
“We don’t have five minutes, Methurish. We barely have three. You have to come back right now. We have to Skip.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I cannot. I swore I would stay. He is my kin.”
“You can’t save him,” Jazon pleaded. “I’m sorry. There’s just no time. Come back now.”
“He is my kin. I cannot make it back in time, even if I wished. You know that. Go. I will accompany my wife’s brother into the vast Unknown.”
“Methurish,” Jazon yelled.
There was no answer.
“That flare is headed our way, Jazon,” Lyton warned. “Our shields won’t hold when it hits. Not as underpowered as we are.”
Jazon could see it on the screen, a great, swirling tendril of plasma reaching greedily for them like a flaming arm, yearning to drag them down into the deadly furnace below. He looked once more at the Dastoran derelict, already melting under the unleashed fury of the red sun.
“Skipping,” he warned as he fired the engines.
The backwash from Occam’s Razor’s Skip swept across the ship graveyard like a scythe, disintegrating the floating hulks of what had once been proud war vessels, and Methurish. At least his death was quick. The bloody jets of plasma from the Eye of the Beast found nothing left to grab and slowly settled back into the seething mass of nuclear fire.
15
We hear the bawling and din – we are reached at by divisions, jealousies and recriminations on every side.
Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman
“You left them there to die,” Huumba accused, as he paced the floor in quick, angry strides, casting withering glances at Jazon. “There was time.”
“There was no time. The flares were on us. We had to Skip or die.” Jazon didn’t like defending his actions, especially to Huumba, but felt he needed to explain. “There almost wasn’t time to grab you. Methurish knew this.”
“I would not have left them,” Huumba challenged loudly.
“Then we all would be dead,” Jazon said flatly.
“Methurish’s kin survived the battle and his lonely entombment only to die at the last moment because you would not wait. Do Dastoran lives mean so little to you?”
Jazon sighed and gave up trying to convince him. “Yes, very little. You’re traitors to your own philosophy. At least the Trilock hold aloft no high moral banners to cover their treacheries, but I wouldn’t have left if it was possible to save them.”
“I doubt you.” Huumba’s scowl challenged Jazon.
Jazon grew weary of arguing. “Doubt if you will. Look at the vids and see for yourself, or pull your knife and come at me.” Jazon pulled his knife from his belt. “You’ll have no better luck than the Trilock assassin.”
The Dastoran hissed his displeasure, spun on his heels, and left the room. Jazon knew there would be more to answer for before the voyage was over.
“You had no choice,” Ulrich said as Huumba left.
“I don’t need you to second guess me,” Jazon snapped.
“I only ….”
Jazon waved his hand. “I know. I know. I’m sorry I yelled at you. It’s just that … well, Huumba might be right.” He looked his friend in the face as if seeking an answer in Ulrich’s eyes. Instead, he only saw himself in the reflection of Ulrich’s glasses. Chastised by this other Jazon, he looked away hurriedly. “Would I have left you so quickly?”
“I hope so.”
Jazon laughed. “You were always morally superior to me, my friend. I guess that’s why we make a good team. You have such high morals, and I have none whatsoever. It’s a balancing act.”
“You’re a good man,” Ulrich assured him.
“Ah, but is merely good, good enough? I would gladly kill the Trilock just on principle. I have killed Methurish and his brother-in-law. I have damaged Amissa, possibly beyond repair. Just how much will I have to account for when the final trumpets blow?”
“You were a marine. Did you second guess every decision you made then?”
“Yes.”
Ulrich smiled. “Were they always right?”
“Some were. Others … Who knows?” Jazon shrugged.
“That’s all you can expect now. You won’t know if you’re right until we get back safely, maybe not even then. Too much second-guessing is dangerous. It’s like having two consciences. No man can survive unscathed under that kind of careful scrutiny. A man needs his dark shadows.”
“Huumba thinks I’m a coward,” Jazon replied. For some reason Huumba’s opinion bothered him.
Ulrich shook his head. “No he doesn’t. He thinks he’s a coward for leaving his friend even though he was unconscious at the time. He knows you did the right thing, just as he would have done in your place. He’s angry at himself for his failure, not for yours.”
“What failure?” Jazon asked.
“He thinks he could not endure the heat as well as Methurish; that he was weaker. He doesn’t realize that he was exposed to the sun’s rays from the derelict to Occam’s Razor and back. That made the difference. His suit couldn’t dissipate all the accumulated heat quickly enough. He’ll realize that soon enough and calm down.”
“He’s courageous; I’ll say that for him. So was Methurish. He could have returned. There was still time.” Jazon couldn’t believe he was lauding the Drones, but he couldn’t deny the truth. Both had earned their Breeder’s rights as far as he was concerned.
“The Dastorans are a clannish lot.”
“So are my people,” Jazon said, and then laughed.
Ulrich looked puzzled. “What’s so funny?”
“I just said ‘my people’, meaning the Diné. I guess I can’t leave the Rez after all, even way out here.”
“Maybe you don’t want to leave it,” Ulrich suggested.
Jazon shot Ulrich a burning glare. “What are you, a psychiatrist?”
“Maybe. The Three Principles allow an individual the same freedom a particle of matter has. You can choose your future, but you can’t choose your past. Your past is as much a part of you as mine is. I ran from mine, as you ran from yours, but neither one of us could escape the truth of our pasts or the consequences of it.
“My motives are facile. I came on this trip because I believe in the Three Principles. I believe that our mission can possibly save the universe. That’s noble enough for me.
“You … you want to make everything so complicated – it’s Amissa, it’s the money, it’s a trip home. Why don’t you just admit that you came because you felt, in your heart, that somewhere out there you’ll find absolution?”
Jazon stared at Ulrich, dumbfounded. Never before had Ulrich been so direct and earnest. Perhaps there was truth in his words, some grain of truth, at least.
“Absolution, huh?” he repeated.
“Absolution,” Ulrich declared firmly.
“Well, why don’t you go and let me think on it awhile. A mind like mine can’t assimilate so much truth at one time. I need to chew on it awhile, like a kattathrip’s cud.”
Ulrich looked at Jazon for a moment, somewhat stunned at his dismissal before adding, “You’re not as tough as you
think, Jazon. I can see little bits of shiny armor showing though the chinks of your façade.”
He left without seeing Jazon’s smile.
Linking up to the ship, Jazon inspected the work Huumba and the others had done bringing the engines back up to par. Everything looked good. Now, they could at least make some long Skips toward their goal. Without Amissa, he wouldn’t risk the ship in interstitial space. Even with the Lyton-Stumphman Navigation System, as the pair insisted on calling it, there were too many variables in the unknown dimensions to account for. The ship’s computer, and especially he, weren’t up to the task.
“Hang on, folks,” he called over the comm. “We’re on our way.”
The ship hardly shuddered, as it knocked a quick twenty light years off their journey. He set up a series of Skips that would bring them within range of the Claw Nebula within two days, hardly the speed Occam’s Razor was capable of, but the best they could manage under the circumstances.
His mental eyes remained glued to the sensors as they swept the surrounding space, bringing the images of stars and planets, black holes, and Globular Clusters to his mental screen. Space abounded with such colors, such wonders, and yet he had spent most of his life in it without really noticing. Oh, he had gazed up at the night sky on an alien world and wondered where Earth was in the upended jewelry box that was the universe, or where the next world on his personal odyssey might lie, but he had never simply accepted the sheer beauty of it. Some men had gone mad when faced with years on the early sub-light vessels. The unending void tore at their minds, refusing to allow a focal point on which the mind could fix. With the development of the Skip engine in the Twenty-Second Century, man could finally examine the rapidly shifting panorama outside the view screens. He could see the universe through grown up eyes.
Perhaps, thought Jazon, I’m growing up as well.
In their communal cabin, Huumba and Harthim performed the Ta Troth, the Right of Spiritual Cleansing for Methurish. A solitary white candle amid a collection of black ones represented the soul of Methurish in the unclean world. One by one, they lit each candle, intoning a verse of scripture with each flickering flame, culminating in the lighting of the white candle.
