by Diane Carey
“When I get back from the anomaly. Just… see that someone’s with those three all the time. Someone armed.”
“Someone… You mean you want them under guard?”
“I do.”
And he cut the connection before she could argue with him. But another one came through almost immediately from Nate, on the returning lander. “We’ve fried those buggers… they burned good.”
“Nobody got too close to them, I hope? There were no more, uh, hatchings? No one was attacked?”
“Well—we got them all I think. A few tried to get out when the burning started but they fried. One of them got on my helmet but… we dealt with it. I needed a new helmet. The fire seemed to neutralize the acid, too.”
“Good—I was worrying about that. Okay—get back here, get some rest, then we suit up for a second exploration.” Corgan had a series of portable communication boosters set up in the navel, the airlock, and the first two rooms of the alien craft, so that they could communicate with the ship despite the field interference. They tried them out as they went, and the system worked.
They found the diamond-flyers where they’d left them, and Corgan showed Hesse, Nate, and Chang how to use them. The expedition consisted of Nate, Hesse, Corgan, Chang, Reynolds, and Ashley. It had a more military feel— because everyone was carrying an electrocharge assault rifle. Theoretically the rifles were for CANC troopers if they arrived—as if they wouldn’t probably be way outnumbered by the CANC soldiers—but privately Corgan was thinking they could come in handy in case there were any more of those face-grabbing bone spiders around.
Or worse.
They passed through the first rooms—Corgan insisting Hesse stay with him, despite the presence of those alluring alien computer stations—and stopped for a while at the alien bridge.
“If there were flies here, you’d be catching them with your open mouth, Chang,” Hesse said, grinning.
“I can’t help it. This place… look at this bridge. How does this shit work?”
“Don’t try to activate anything,” Corgan warned them.
“Captain—we’ve been to this part of the artifact,” Reynolds said testily. “There is a great deal more to explore. We might find… well, anything. We need to move on, and urgently.”
“Come on,” Corgan said to the others, nodding. “He’s right… we’ve got other rooms to investigate.”
The next room was below and to the rear of the room enclosing the bridge—the doorway was a gap in the floor that opened down to a curving ramp that descended in a spiraling half circle to a room even bigger than the one above it. Chang whistled appreciatively. “The goddamn scale of this thing…”
“Look—it’s a car or a jitney or something… There’s a knob for steering…” A wheelless vehicle, shaped like a wedge of cake, was parked to one side. Chang tried to figure out how to activate it but couldn’t find the starter.
While he was doing that, Corgan was looking around and calling up through the booster system to O’Neil who was in the lander—probably playing a computer game as he waited. He was a 3-D poker addict. “O’Neil, you read me?”
“Copy, Captain. How’s it going?” came the crackling reply.
“No problems so far. Hard to describe. You want someone to take your place, so you can check it out?”
“No hurry on that. I just got a report from the ship, Cruz and the others—Nurse Julie says they’re okay, though Cruz is feeling kind of weird or something… But who wouldn’t, after what—”
“You tell her no one leaves quarantine. No one. And that’s to be enforced. You got me?”
“Copy that, Captain.”
Then, over the radio, Corgan heard a computer-generated voice saying: “‘Nice hand! You have a Triple Full House!’“
“Hey O’Neil? Stop playing that 3-D poker. You’re supposed to be monitoring the situation.”
“Oh shit, I was just getting on a winning streak…”
“Whatever. Christ. Just… call me if there’s any problem, O’Neil. Out.” He cut the connection.
“Look at this place, Captain,” Ashley said.
He stepped farther in for a better view, and whistled at the sight.
The enormous chamber was bisected by a broad avenue between glassed-in areas, almost like gigantic aquariums without the water, each one connected to the next, deck to overhead—the panels soaring far above. Within the glass chambers were sludgy materials, a meter and more deep, blackened with time; in one of them the fragile remains of plants could be seen. Unknown machines clustered on the ceiling over the sludge.
Reynolds pushed his nose to the nearest window to stare at the plants.
“Kid, you can have all the candy in that store,” Hesse said. “I don’t think anyone else wants it.”
“That’s an exobiological treasure chest,” Ashley pointed out. “Must be thousands of DNA signatures… from another planet. Or planets. In some other solar system.”
“What do you think it was, Reynolds?” Corgan asked. “This sludge?”
“I… probably food sources. Hydroponics. Unless maybe some kind of… experiment. But this is an interstellar ship—I think they might well have wanted to grow their own food. Could be they were an exploration ship— might’ve had to be out from their homeworld for years at a time. It’s a big galaxy, a lot to see.”
“That stuff could be cargo,” Chang pointed out. “I don’t see a door in the… Wait, let’s try this.”
He activated the sonic key they’d taken from Cruz— and a door “magically” excised itself into the wall of the glass, letting sludge glop heavily out into the avenue.
The smell that came with it wasn’t exactly bad—there were no living microorganisms in it—but it was curiosity-tweaking, piquant, evocative without definite associations to evoke. Corgan tried to associate it with the smell of hay and cinnamon and seaweed and then decided it was like none of those things. Then something occurred to him…
“We’re not wearing our helmets. Back away from that stuff…” The team obeyed—all but Reynolds who stared at it, turning his suit camera to take it all in. Corgan turned to Reynolds.
“You go ahead and, um, investigate it, Reynolds,” Corgan said. “But with your helmet on. And your gloves. What’s left of that stuff could be giving off poisoned gas or fluids for all you know.”
Reynolds put his helmet on and went to work collecting samples, muttering to himself.
“We’ll call you if we find anything else of an exobiological nature,” Corgan told him.
“Yes, yes, whatever, let me concentrate, Corgan, for God’s sake.”
Corgan shook his head but kept his temper. He led the rest of the team on, to the next big room of the alien spacecraft.
“Crew quarters,” Corgan and Ashley muttered, at once. Down below were diamond-shaped tables floating above the floor, up above were platforms leading to three layered rows of honeycomb-like apartments—the diamond-shaped chambers literally fitted together like giant honeycombs.
The expedition caused its diamond-flyers to lift up to the honeycomb rooms. In the first two they found soft nets on the wall that crumbled at their touch—Ashley suspected they were for sleeping. “They sleep standing up.” There was a shower-like chamber that issued jets of a chemical spray, and there were dried-out cakes of some substance that might’ve been food; there were recesses for drinking and elimination. Inside the third, fourth, and fifth chambers they found a number of bodies drifting over the floor; a slow, mournful waltz of ancient corpses. They were desiccated like the one they’d found in Room Two, and most of them had the marks on their heads where their skulls had been reamed through.
“Reynolds,” Corgan called, on his radio. “You reading me?”
“Yes, yes, what is it?”
“We’re in the next room—some kind of crew’s quarters. Upper level, we have a lot more alien bodies here. Pretty much dried out like the one we found and… marks of violence on them.”
“Indeed. I will come, in time, an
d catalogue them. Over.” He summarily cut the connection.
Corgan sighed. “What a charmer. Okay uh—if anybody finds any more keys, equipment on these bodies, bring it to my attention but don’t activate it. That’s an order. You could open an airlock or something.”
“Doubtful, Captain, they’d be that badly organized,” Chang said.
“Badly organized enough to get themselves all killed…” Nate remarked, examining the bodies.
But Corgan was thinking the opposite: Whatever had killed creatures this advanced had to be one efficient, effective, lethal killing machine.
* * *
“I wish I could be down there with those guys,” Dorea was saying, in the infirmary of the Hornblower, as she helped Nurse Julie spoon food from the processor onto plastic plates for the three quarantined men. “Up here playing house.”
Nurse Julie glanced at her in mild irritation. Dorea liked to pretend that she was more-feminist-than-thou, or so it seemed to Julie at times.
“I don’t mean that,” Dorea said, guessing at her feelings. “We need you to keep us alive, for Christ’s sake, I don’t think of you as the ship’s housewife. I just… like being out there. That’s what feels good to me. I got into this for exploration.” She sniffed at the food. “What’s this supposed to be? Smell’s like dog food.”
“It’s stew, they claim. Beef stew. Sorta.”
It was never real beef, of course; beef from living cattle had become increasingly rare on Earth since Mad Cow disease had gotten out of control in the mid-twenty-first century. Most meat, like this, was cut from discrete vat-grown haunches; it was flesh grown like tubers, using stem cells and segments of animal DNA, making slaughterhouses unnecessary. There were rather too many cattle roaming about in Texas now.
“It probably tasted good, when they first put it in storage, before it was frozen and left in there for months,” Julie was saying, as they carried the food into the men.
Dorea noticed Collindale looking longingly at the door as they came in. “Getting sick of being in here, Horus?” Dorea asked lightly.
“Goddamn you know I am,” Collindale said. “I’m sick of looking at these two geeks here, too.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” Beresford said, wolfing down his food. “Man I’ve been hungry. Feeling weird, really—like I’m full all the time, no room for a thing… but hungry as a bear every second, too. Doesn’t make sense. Pass that salt packet, man.”
Immanuel Cruz, who was staring at his food instead of eating it, tossed him the paper salt pack and set the plate aside.
“Not hungry?” Nurse Julie said, going to take his pulse.
Cruz pulled away from her. “Not hungry—and I’m sick of being watched and prodded. I am getting fucking claustrophobic in here.”
“Amen to that,” Collindale said. “Hey, we should bust outta here. What do you say. Saw through the bars.”
“No bars,” Cruz said, responding to a joke with complete seriousness as he stared at the door. “Just our agreement, keeping us in here. Our willingness. That door’s not locked.”
“It is when we leave the room,” Nurse Julie said. “Immy? Do try to eat something, okay?”
“And Buxton’s out there, with Dinswood, pretending they know something about being sentries, in the hall,” Dorea said, shrugging, handing a plastic bottle of flavored water to Beresford. “Captain’s orders.”
“Like they’d shoot us if we went out there,” Collindale snorted, putting his plate aside. “Yeah right.”
Dorea shrugged. “He said enforce it, and he didn’t say how. But they’ve got guns. And what I remember is, Dinswood never did like you.” Her own rifle was standing against the wall in the next room.
“Electrician boy’s the only real racist I ever met in my life,” Collindale said. “I thought they were a dying breed.”
“Oh come on, he doesn’t mean that Back in Ol’ Dixie stuff,” Julie said, putting Collindale’s plate in the cleanser. “He just likes to be quaint. Hey Immy—you sure you won’t…”
She broke off as Cruz began to shake, to blink rapidly, to clutch and open and clutch his hands, his eyes bugging, mouth opening…
Making gagging noises.
Back arching.
Then bending over forward—snapping back. Forward. Back.
Falling onto the floor.
“Jesus!” Collindale said, bending to hold Cruz’s arms. “It’s like he’s having a fit, he’s…”
“Oh God, oh no, it’s like those things, those aliens on that video, on that table—it’s bulging… it’s busting out of him!”
His chest was swelling like a balloon on a pressurizer, his back arching, his teeth grating, the words coming out of him stranglingly, “Helllllp meeeee… fuck oh… ohhh… please…”
The others tried to hold him down, to stabilize him, but he was convulsing too hard, flopping like a fish…
Dorea opened the door to shout for the men in the hall. And that’s when the thing burst bloodily from Cruz’s chest. Burst like a demon child ripping free from its mother. Tearing its way out as Cruz screamed in pain. Rearing up in the ragged crater of his breached chest, like a hideous sculpture in a hellish fountain as blood gushed up around it.
It was a bit smaller than a human child, an eyeless thing, halfway between a fetus and a xenomorph, its steely wet teeth bared, gore-dripping mucusy head turning jerkily from side to side, hissing…
Before it whipped from the room, moving so fast they couldn’t see how it was going, leaving the dying Cruz behind.
And Collindale…
And Beresford…
Were staring down at themselves. Waiting.
9
The quarantine exam room smelled of Cruz’s blood.
“I’m gonna cut myself open!” Beresford was yelling. “I’m not gonna let that fucking thing tear its way outta me! I’m gonna take it out myself right fucking now! There’s no time, it might come any second! I’m gonna cut… I’m gonna cut my… I’m gonna cut myself! Give me a fucking knife!”
Collindale was just sitting there, on the edge of an exam table, holding his stomach, his hands trembling against his abdomen, his eyes staring, aghast. Every so often he licked his lips and made a sound like, “Uck. Uck.”
“Where did that thing go?” Dorea wondered, feeling stunned herself. She looked through the door to the observation area. And saw the ventilation grate near the ceiling had been torn away. There was a trail of blood— Cruz’s blood—leading out the door of the quarantine, up a cabinet, up the wall. How had the thing climbed that sheer wall? Had it jumped? How had it been born so… competent?
And now it was in the air shafts—the ship’s life-support system.
“Oh God,” she muttered, bending to grab Cruz’s body by his armpits, pulling him off into a corner. The corpse, with its oozingly ruptured chest, had at least stopped twitching. She covered his white, ogling face with a paper gurney sheet—and straightened up at a desperate shout to see Nurse Julie frantically struggling with Beresford, who had found a razor-sharp surgical scalpel somewhere, was brandishing it now. Nurse Julie had his wrists in her hands but was barely managing to keep him from slashing himself.
Collindale was ignoring this, was just sitting there, pushing against his stomach, muttering to himself, trying to feel the thing he presumed was inside him. “I think I… I think I feel the…”
“I’m gonna fucking cut the thing out of me!” Beresford shouted, eyes wild, shoving Nurse Julie away so that she staggered back and slammed into the wall, stunned. “Before it’s too late! Cruz was first but it’s gonna bust outta me—and soon! I’m not gonna let it do that!”
Dorea ran to Beresford, grabbed his right arm—the scalpel was in his right hand—and tried to twist it, to make him drop the knife, but he slammed his elbow viciously against her chin, making her stagger back, black spots dancing before her eyes.
Dorea almost lost consciousness but made herself hold on. She staggered into the next room, got her rifle, and
opened the door to the corridor. Dinswood—a wiry man with thin blond hair and downslanted eyes—looked at the gun in her hand.
“What the hell, why you holding that like you thinking of shooting it, girl?” he asked, in his Deep South accent.
“Can’t you guys hear anything? Get in here! Cruz is dead and Beresford’s gone off his nut!”
Buxton and Dinswood rushed past her, raising their electrocharge assault rifles. “Don’t be shooting those things off in there!” Dorea shouted. “Use the butts if you have to get tough!”
“Girl, who died and said you’d be giving me orders, you’re not a—”
Dinswood broke off, staring at the blood on the floor, the body in the corner, Collindale babbling, and now the new blood coming from Nurse Julie’s nose and split lip, as she leaned, sobbing, against the wall, holding her right eye…
And he, Dorea, and Buxton stared at Beresford as he let out a long pealing scream—and sank the scalpel deeply into his torso, just under the breastbone, dragging the blade horizontally, grinding his teeth with the pain, cutting a ragged gash that sent out a red fan of blood spattering his knees, his shoes, the deck, the blood shiny in the over-lit room… and the room reeked of blood, of the internal mysteries of the human body.
“Drop that fucking knife now!” Buxton shouted, putting the assault rifle to his shoulder and aiming it at Beresford.
The knife clattered to the deck—but Beresford, shaking and howling with pain, his face a mask of strain, blood running from the corners of his mouth, was forcing his right hand into the wound, and feeling around inside…
Dorea saw Nurse Julie now fumbling in a drawer, looking for the gravitationally adhered emergency tranquilizer injects. She found one, pulled it free, popped the top off, even as Dorea and Dinswood tried to grab Beresford, but he was slick with blood and he kicked viciously to keep them back… Dinswood gagging, trying not to throw up at what he was seeing…
Seeing Beresford jam his hand and upper arm into the wound in his own chest, up past the wrist, undulating in place with agony but snarling with determination, bloody foam flying from his mouth as he gasped out: “I’m… gonna pull the fucking thing out before it rips its way outta me… gonna pull it out the bottom, before it can… kill me… I’m gonna… I’m gonna… I’m fucking gonna… Oh God… I’m gonna pull it out!”
