Space Soldiers

by Jack Dann

  Suddenly I heard a scratching . . .

  ###

  My searchbeam was on again, my helmet had unmisted, my present bubble was empty.

  Just the same, I scuttled out of it, still trending upward where I could. But now the holes wouldn’t trend that way. They kept going two down for one up and the lines of bubbles zigzagged. I wanted to go back, but then I might hear the scratching. Once the bubbles started getting smaller. It was like being in solid black suds. I lost any sense of direction. I began to lose the sense of up-down. What’s moon-gravity to the numbness of psychosis? I kept my searchlight on although I was sure the glow it made must reach ten bubbles away. I looked all around every bubble before I entered it, especially the overhang just above the entry hole.

  Every once in a while, I would hear somebody saying Six! Six? Six! like that and then very rapidly seven-eight-nine-five-four-three-two-one-naught. How would you rap naught in the decimal system? That one I finally solved: you’d rap ten.

  Finally, I came into a bubble that had a side-hole four feet across and edged at the top with diamonds. Very fancy. Was this the Spider Princess’ boudoir? There was also a top hole but I didn’t bother with that—it had no decor. I switched off my searchlight and looked out the window without exposing my head. The diamonds were stars. After a bit I made out what I took to be the opposite lip of the fissure I’d first dove in, only about one hundred feet above me. The rim-wall beyond looked vaguely familiar, though I wasn’t sure about the notch. My time dial said one hundred eighteen minutes gone as I switched it off. Almost time to start hoping for rescue. Oh great!—with their ship a sitting duck for the crusoe they wouldn’t be expecting. I hadn’t signaled a word besides Extreme Emergency.

  I moved forward and sat in the window, one leg outside, my Swift under my left arm. I plucked a flash grenade set for five seconds from my belt, pulled the fuse and tossed it across the fissure, almost hard enough to reach the opposite wall.

  I looked down, my Swift swinging like my gaze.

  The fissure lit up like a boulevard. Across from me I knew the flare was dropping dreamily, but I wasn’t looking that way. Right below me, two hundred feet down, I saw a transparent helmet with something green and round and crested inside and with shoulders under it.

  Just then I heard the scratching again, quite close.

  I fired at once. My shell made a violet burst and raised a fountain of dust twenty feet from the crusoe. I scrambled back into my bubble, switching on my searchlight. Another spider was coming in on the opposite side, its legs moving fast. I jumped for the top-hole and grabbed its rim with my free hand. I’d have dropped my Swift if I’d needed my other hand, but I didn’t. As I pulled myself up and through, I looked down and saw the spider straight below me eyeing me with its uptilted opalescent eyes and doubling its silver legs. Then it straightened its legs and sprang up toward me, not very fast but enough against Luna’s feeble gravitational tug to put it into this upper room with me. I knew it mustn’t touch me and I mustn’t touch it by batting at it. I had started to shift the explosive shell in my gun for a slug, and its green-banded body was growing larger, when there was a green blast in the window below and its explosion-front, booming my suit a little, knocked the spider aside and out of sight before it made it through the trap door of my new bubble. Yet the spider didn’t explode, if that was what had happened to the first one; at any rate there was no second green flash.

  My new bubble had a top-hole, too, and I went through it the same way I had the last. The next five bubbles were just the same. I told myself that my routine was getting to be like that of a circus acrobat—except who stages shows inside black solidity?—except the gods maybe with the dreams they send us. The lava should be transparent, so the rim-wall peaks could admire.

  At the same lime I was thinking how if the biped humanoid shape is a good one for medium-size creatures on any planet, why so the spider shape is a good one for tiny creatures and apt to turn up anywhere and be copied in robots, too.

  The top-hole in the sixth bubble showed me the stars, while one-half of its rim shone white with sunlight.

  Panting, I lay back against the rock. I switched off my searchlight. I didn’t hear any scratching.

  The stars. The stars were energy. They filled the universe with light, except for hidey-holes and shadows here and there. Then the number came to me. With the butt of my Swift, I rapped out five. No answer. No scratching either. I rapped out five again.

  Then the answer came, ever so faintly. Five knocked back at me.

  Six five five—Planck’s Constant, the invariant quantum of energy. Oh, it should be to the minus 29th power, of course, but I couldn’t think how to rap that and, besides, the basic integers were all that mattered.

  I heard the scratching . . .

  I sprang and caught the rim and lifted myself into the glaring sunlight . . . and stopped with my body midway.

  Facing me a hundred feet away, midway through another top-hole—he must have come very swiftly by another branch of the bubble ladder—he’d know the swiftest ones—was my green-crested crusoe. His face had a third eye where a man’s nose would be, which with his crest made him look like a creature of mythology. We were holding our guns vertically.

  We looked like two of the damned, half out of their holes in the floor of Dante’s hell.

  I climbed very slowly out of my hole, still pointing my gun toward the zenith. So did he.

  We held very still for a moment. Then with his gun butt he rapped out ten. I could both see and also hear it through the rock.

  I rapped out three. Then, as if the black bubble-world were one level of existence and this another, I wondered why we were going through this rigamarole. We each knew the other had a suit and a gun (and a lonely hole?) and so we knew we were both intelligent and knew math. So why was our rapping so precious?

  He raised his gun—I think to rap out one, to start off pi.

  But I’ll never be sure, for just then there were two violet bursts, close together, against the fissure wall, quite close to him.

  He started to swing the muzzle of his gun toward me. At least I think he did. He must know violet was the color of my explosions. I know I thought someone on my side was shooting. And I must have thought he was going to shoot me—because a violet dagger leaped from my Swift’s muzzle and I felt its sharp recoil and then there was a violet globe where he was standing and moments later some fragment twinged lightly against my chest—a playful ironic tap. He was blown apart pretty thoroughly, all his constants scattered, including—I’m sure—Planck’s.

  It was another half-hour before the rescue ship from Circumluna landed. I spent it looking at earth low on the horizon and watching around for the spider, but I never saw it. The rescue party never found it either, though they made quite a hunt—with me helping after I’d rested a bit and had my batteries and oxy replenished. Either its power went off when its master died, or it was set to “freeze” then, or most likely go into a “hide” behavior pattern. Likely it’s still out there waiting for an incautious earthman, like a rattlesnake in the desert or an old, forgotten land mine.

  I also figured out, while waiting in Gioja crater, there near the North Pole, on the edge of Shackleton crater, the only explanation I’ve ever been able to make, though it’s something of a whopper, of the two violet flashes which ended my little mathematical friendship-chant with the crusoe. They were the first two shells I squeezed off at him—the ones that skimmed the notch. They had the velocity to orbit Luna, and the time they took—two hours and five minutes—was right enough.

  Oh, the consequences of our past actions!

  SAVIOR

  Robert Reed

  Robert Reed sold his first story in 1986, and quickly established himself as a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Asimov’s Science Fiction, as well as selling many stories to Science Fiction Age, Universe, New Destinies, Tomorrow, Synergy, Starlight, and elsewhere. Reed is almost as pro
lific a novelist as he is as a short-story writer, having produced eight novels to date, including The Lee Shore, The Hormone Jungle, Black Milk, The Remarkables, Down the Bright Way, Beyond the Veil of Stars, An Exaltation of Larks, and Beneath the Gated Sky. His most recent book is his long-overdue first collection, The Dragons of Spring-Place. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he’s at work on a novel-length version of his 1997 novella, “Marrow.” Here he gives us a powerful and poignant look at some of the things a soldier might have to do if he wants to be a savior of his people—and at the bitter personal cost of doing them.

  ###

  Grandpa showed up early. I was still in bed, still hard asleep. And Mom pulled at my arm, telling me, “Get up, darling.” But I couldn’t make myself. I was too tired. Grandpa was standing in the door. I’m pretty sure of that. Mom asked if this was a good thing, considering. Mom said, “Considering,” more than once. But Grandpa didn’t say one word. Then I was sitting up, halfway awake, and she told me, “Your clothes are laid out. Go on, honey.” And they let me dress alone in the dark.

  My shirts and pants were new and warm and comfortably scratchy. But my boots were left over from last year. Even though they’d grown out as far as they could, and even though my toes felt cramped up inside them, I liked them. And I liked my hunting vest, even though it was too big and heavy. It was Grandpa’s once. I liked its dirty orange color and its old smells. And whenever I put it on, before it got too heavy for me, I liked how it felt. With all those shells stuck into its little elastic pockets, I felt like a soldier. I felt dangerous and safe wrapped up inside all that ammunition.

  Both of them were waiting in the kitchen. Grandpa was talking until he heard me. He looked up and smiled and said, “Ready?”

  Mom was crying. Not like last night, but she was wiping at her face and smiling at me, her eyes red and ugly. “You two have fun today,” she said. As if it was an order. Then she gave Grandpa a big hug and me a wet kiss, then tried to kiss me again. But I slipped outside before she could.

  Grandpa always bought himself a new truck for Opening Day.

  That year’s truck was parked between our houses, already running and every light burning. We climbed in, and I said, “Hi, Solomon.”

  Solomon was standing on the back seat, watching everything with happy yellow eyes. “Hello, Sammy,” he said. “Bird day, bird day, bird day—!”

  Grandpa said, “Quiet.”

  Solomon was a retriever-techie mix. His dog brain had a chip add-on, and there was a voice box stuck in his neck. The box made him sound like a little kid. Except he was an old dog. And I liked him, sort of. Even if we weren’t friends, exactly. Dogs can be awfully jealous, and we never liked sharing Grandpa with one another.

  We rolled down the long drive and past Grandpa’s house, then through the first tall black gate. I waved at the night guards. There were a dozen of them, maybe more. The main road went past all those cameras and reporters. Grandpa took us out the back road to the slickway, then let the truck drive. I started to feel the warm seat under me, and I sat back and shut my eyes, and it wasn’t until the dog said, “Birds,” that I was awake again.

  “I smell birds,” said that kid’s voice. “I smell birds!”

  We had turned off the slickway. Grandpa was driving again, steering us down a road that looked like two paths running through the tall brown grass. I heard the grass slipping under us. The sun wasn’t up. Except for a little glow past a line of trees, there wasn’t anything that looked like a sunrise. I pulled myself up and coughed, then asked, “How soon?”

  “Soon,” said the dog. “Soon, soon.”

  The television was on. The news was playing with the sound turned down low. When Grandpa’s face appeared on the little screen, Grandpa turned it off. Then he let the truck roll to a stop, and there was nothing to hear but warm air blowing from the vents. I felt the heat on my bare face and in my crammed-together toes. Looking out the window, I knew it was cold. Even for November. And I knew that I was comfortable here, and happy enough, and did we have to walk through these cold dark fields?

  I asked the question in my head. Nowhere else.

  Grandpa hadn’t said one word. He usually liked to tell me our plans and ask how I was feeling, and he’d remind me how I needed to be careful all the time. Hunting wasn’t a game. But when he wouldn’t talk, I asked, “When does it get light?”

  He said nothing.

  I looked at him and saw him looking at me. Only he wasn’t. Mom always told me that he had a kindly face, and maybe I knew what she meant. But something about those old eyes made me squirm. Just for that moment.

  Then he patted me on the knee, saying, “Soon.”

  It’s what the dog had said, only Grandpa’s voice was old and tired and he didn’t sound as if he meant it.

  ###

  My gun was my grandfather’s when he was a boy. He gave it to me, even though we kept it at his house where he could keep it clean for me. I always liked its weight when I first picked it up, and I loved the slick sharp sounds it made when I loaded it. The black barrel was always cold to touch. The wood parts were decorated with checkerboards where your hands held tight, and the butt was padded with thick pink rubber. Where Grandpa’s guns were fancy and new, mine was simple. It didn’t have any videocam or adjustable shells. I shot old-fashioned shells. Plastic and brass and nickel-iron shot. The only new trick was the strapped on safety that kept me from accidentally shooting at people or myself.

  The safety told me, “I am on the job.”

  Solomon whispered, “This way, hurry. This way.”

  “Wait,” Grandpa told him.

  But the dog kept going, his old hips fighting to keep up.

  “He didn’t hear you,” I ventured.

  “No, he hears,” he said. “He just pretends to be deaf.”

  The sun was coming up, finally. But the sky in front of us was still dark, full of stars and the low stations and the big geosynchronous cities. I looked up, and maybe I was watching for the starship. And maybe Grandpa saw me looking. Because he took me by the shoulder, saying nothing. Just sort of steering me toward the field.

  All sorts of crops had been growing on that ground. The harvesters had left their marks, tilling up the black ground as they passed. Here and there were masses of green leaves. Some cold-happy tailored vegetable was mixed in with the dead stalks and empty steak pods and the dried up melon vines. Just walking in that field was work. My gun and vest and boots were getting heavy. Even if I was bigger than last year, and stronger, I’d forgotten, like I always forgot, how much it hurt to pull your feet through those tangled vines.

  “Slow,” said Grandpa. To the dog.

  The sun eased its way over the horizon. I turned and looked back at it and at the new truck, squinting hard.

  Grandpa said, “Pay attention.”

  To me.

  The dog had stopped in front of a mound of brown stalks. Sniffing hard. Was it pheasants? Or quail? Or one of the tailored species? I was hoping for something big and fancy. A screamer, or even a flashbird. Stepping closer, I lifted my gun up to my shoulder, and that’s when Solomon started to growl, the black fur on his neck standing up straight, and his old body leaping inside the mound.

  “Get back here!” Grandpa yelled.

  Suddenly there was this wild growling.

  “Come!” Grandpa screamed. “Come here!”

  And the growling turned to squealing. Solomon practically flew out of there, his head down and his eyes almost shut. He went straight toward the first person he saw. Which was me. And I smelled him exactly when Grandpa said, “Shit!”

  Said, “Skunk!”

  It wasn’t just a smell. The stink that you smell on the slickway, that hangs around a dead skunk, is nothing compared to the juices that come out of a living animal. It’s like getting hit in the nose with a hockey stick. You feel it as much as you smell it, and it makes you sick. That’s why I turned and tried to run.

  Grandpa was shouting, “Stop!”<
br />
  He said, “Heel!”

  He said, “Son-of-a-bitch!” and began firing. Boom, Boom. And I turned, watching him aiming square at the mound. At the skunk. Boom. Boom. And boom.

  I’d never seen Grandpa that way. In the low bright light, he looked almost young, his face full of color and his eyes big and his gloved hands shoving in another five shells, every move slick and smooth. Then he aimed again, this time at the sky, and he fired off all five shots before he felt done.

  Solomon was rolling in the stalks and vines, fighting to get rid of the stink.

  I just stood there, feeling useless and sad.

  Grandpa lowered his gun, then said, “Back to the truck, boys. Now.”

  Solomon was saying, “Shit, shit, shit, shit!” I looked at the sky, up where Grandpa had been shooting, and that’s when I saw the starship hanging there. Big as a big coin held at arm’s length, and the same color as a coin, but square-looking, with shadows filling up the nozzles of its huge, dead engines.

  ###

  The farmhouse was an old house.

  The farmer was an old man who didn’t have any hair on his head, or anywhere. He looked at us through his storm door, then said, “Oh,” with a quiet little voice. His eyes couldn’t have been any bigger.

  Grandpa said, “Mr. Teeson? My people talked to you this summer. About giving me permission to go hunting on your land?”