by Diane Carey
Then it was gone, behind the cubical appliance. Buxton and Dorea followed, guns at ready—but it had vanished into…
“A fucking hole in the wall. Burned, like, right through the wall…” Buxton said. “Oh God help us.”
11
Collindale glanced through the front outscreen of the lander, where the small craft Corgan had arrived in, Lander One, just twenty minutes earlier, was sitting on the deck still visibly giving off heat as its engines cooled. He’d barely managed to keep Julie quiet while they watched, from behind the fueling station tanks, as Corgan, Nate, and the others—including a complaining Reynolds—had piled from the lander, hurrying toward the lift. They’d been single-minded about it, naturally enough obsessing about the deaths, the aliens wandering the Hornblower—had they looked over their shoulder, they’d have seen Collindale holding a gun on Julie.
Now he was in the pilot’s seat of Lander Two. While Nurse Julie was occupied getting ready, Collindale kept the gun pointed at her and programmed the lander to follow its previous route to the alien spacecraft, never taking his eyes off Julie for more than a second or two. He had made sure to pull the radio battery from the back of her helmet. She couldn’t call the ship now…
“Just put the fucking helmet on, Julie.”
He’d gotten her to put on the spacesuit, though she’d grumbled sullenly the whole time, but something about putting on the helmet really scared her. “You’re not going to make us space walk…? Because I’m not trained for it.”
“You’ll need the suit, that’s all I’m telling you.” And he pointed the gun at her.
“I don’t believe you’d shoot me down dead here, Horus.”
“You don’t believe it because you haven’t got a fucking parasitical alien growing in your guts. You don’t know what that’s like, do you Julie?” He thought he could feel it squirm in him right now. It was getting restless; getting ready to make its move. Disgusting to feel the thing in there. Made him feel disgusted with his own body somehow. “Anyway—I can’t just let you go, I need you to help me. And you’d let them know where I’ve gone… You can monitor the lander from here. Now… put it the fuck on!” She glared at him but she put the helmet on. He fitted his own helmet into place.
She clung to the arms of her seat when the hangar depressurized and the doors slid open—and he could hear her breathing hard in her helmet when the lander accelerated out into space. Her contract called for work only in the spacecraft, he remembered. She was an “indoor” crewman. “If you’re scared of space you shouldn’t sign up for a spacecraft, Julie,” he said.
“And you should’ve trusted me to help you…”
Maybe he should’ve. But he was committed now. And wait’ll she saw what he was going to do on the hull of that ship down there… that steel egg…
In minutes, they’d landed on the anomaly, and he’d set the autopilot timer on the lander, shifting its heading, and then herded Julie out into the vacuum, across the ridged hull, keeping the muzzle pointed at her. The rifle wouldn’t fire out here, but he could break one of her breather tanks, crack her helmet with the butt of the gun…
God. What was he thinking? What had he become, in the course of an hour?
But… every time he had a thought like that, he remembered the thing ripping its way from Cruz’s chest…
He just wasn’t going to let that happen to him. No matter what it took.
They were fifty paces off, almost to the navel, stumbling on the odd raised metal patterns of the alien hull, when the lander’s autopilot timer took hold, and the small craft accelerated straight upward, and headed toward the far side of Iapetus…
That ought to confuse them, Collindale thought.
* * *
“Where the hell is he going?” Corgan wondered aloud. “The lander’s heading to the far side of that damned frozen moon. There’s nothing there…”
Corgan, Hesse, Ashley, O’Neil, and Nate were on the bridge, monitoring the flight path of Lander Two. Reynolds was in the infirmary examining the remains of the dead men, looking for traces of the aliens. Dix was there too—in the observation room, lying on a gurney, tranquilized. He’d been gibbering when they’d brought him in. Dorea and Chang were standing guard in the infirmary; Dinswood and Buxton were in the corridor aft of the bridge, armed and on watch—nervously on watch. The sight of Bayfield’s body had unnerved everyone. Corgan had it loaded onto a forklift bot, sent to the incinerator, programmed for disposal. He had no time for sentimentality. Later on, they’d have a ceremony for all the lost hands…
Lost hands. Dead men. His crew.
He’d failed them. His first directive as captain was to keep his crew alive and well and get them back safely. He felt a dark, black cloud rise up in him, a cosmic bleakness he’d never felt before—he’d had his share of depression, but never with that kind of density. Mostly he’d succeeded in life. Succeeded in school, in combat, in the Interplanetary Corps, done well as a captain. Until now. Now—if he got out of this alive—he was going to have to write letters to families, trying to explain to them how their loved ones had died. He knew that Cruz had a wife and kids back on Earth. Beresford had a wife. Even Bayfield had family.
And what was he going to tell them about Collindale? Sorry, he just sort of wandered off into space.
“Captain?”
“Hm?” He realized, then, that Ashley had said something to him he hadn’t taken in. He had to get it together. “Sorry. What was that?”
“We going after Collindale?”
“No, I don’t think—”
“Captain?” It was Dorea on the comm. “We can’t find Julie. And I checked the ship’s computer—inventory said two suits were checked out after you got back.”
“Oh Jesus,” Nate muttered. Corgan knew Nate had a thing for Nurse Julie. They’d dated and broken up when Julie gave him an ultimatum about marriage. But Nate wasn’t over her. “We’ve gotta go after her!”
Corgan nodded. “We’ll secure the ship and go after them. But—what the hell is he trying to accomplish?”
“He’s out of his mind, Daryl. He’s… got that thing in him.” He swallowed, staring at the monitor showing the arc of the lander’s flight path. It had settled into orbit on the far side of the frozen moon. “It’s made him crazy—he’s just going off half-cocked, in a panic… Can’t we override control on that lander?” “Not with the moon between it and us. We could move the ship though. But meanwhile— we’ve got alien predators roaming the ship.” He shook his head. “I have to give that priority, Nate.”
Ashley was entering a query into the computer mainframe. “Captain… maybe they’re not in that lander at all.”
“How do you figure?”
“I just thought—where else could they have gone? If you backtrack its flight path—the lander stopped on the anomaly. Suppose they’re in that steel egg out there?”
“And he used the lander for a decoy!” Corgan burst out, looking at her admiringly.
“Wherever he is,” Nate pointed out, “that thing is going to bust out of him—and that puts Julie at risk.”
“Okay Nate—you want to take a volunteer with you, you can go after them. I’ve got to get this ship secured.”
Nate looked at O’Neil—who looked at the deck and cleared his throat.
“I’ll go,” Ashley said.
Corgan shook his head. “No—I need you here. You’re the science officer…”
Hesse shrugged. “I’ll go with you, Nate. Let’s suit up.”
They hurried out and Corgan glanced at the transmitter, thinking about reporting the situation as a whole, asking for permission to return to Mars. They could seal off part of the ship, let the authorities on Mars send in heavily armed crews to clear it, once they got back to Mars orbit…
But that was against the rules. Till now, the rules about encounters with a hostile alien race had been theoretical. But they were drilled into a captain’s head anyway since there were indications Earth had been visit
ed before. UNIC was firm about encounter procedure—and quarantine was a big part of it. Then there were the creatures themselves— they were extremely dangerous. If the images on the anomaly were to be believed, even more dangerous than they’d showed themselves to be so far.
Corgan made up his mind—and just hoped it was the right decision. He was losing confidence in his ability to make good decisions. He turned to the computer, asked for a display of the Hornblower’s interiors, as a projected holo. The image was projected into the air over the control panel, in yellow and green, with orange insignia: intricate and multileveled. He walked around it, peering at the various decks, seen in translucent detail. “The thing that killed Bayfield went into the vents there, in the kitchen. That duct goes—well, all over the ship. But it’s either going to go to ground… or start hunting something to attack. Whatever that thing is, it’s a predator.”
O’Neil nodded. “Yeah…” His voice was shaky. He clutched his assault rifle closer. “A predator.”
Corgan tapped the comm. “Reynolds? You there? What’s status?”
“We’re stable—and I’m busy!” came his querulous voice.
“Reynolds, I’ll make you busy—busy walking point through the ship if you don’t change your goddamn tone with me.”
Reynolds didn’t reply but the line remained open, softly issuing white noise.
Corgan went on, “Listen—I know you haven’t got enough data, Reynolds. But just give me a guess—those things have been eating. They going to attack us now or go to ground and maybe… digest?”
“Indications are, they’ll be in a growth cycle, probably temporarily dormant—I wouldn’t count on it to last long.”
“All right—you be on your guard anyway.”
Corgan took a deep breath, stood up, unslinging his rifle from his shoulder. “We search the ship, look for where these things have gone to ground… Starting forward, moving methodically to aft.”
“What about the parts we can’t get into?” O’Neil asked.
“Bots,” Ashley said. “I can send in maintenance bots to report on an anomaly. They find anything, they’ll send it to the mainframe. I’ll tell the mainframe to loop it back to us wherever we are.”
Corgan nodded. “Let’s do it. And check to see those rifles are loaded—then take the safety off.”
* * *
Collindale and Julie were in the crew quarters of the alien spacecraft, the topmost row of the honeycomb-shaped chambers. Collindale was lying on his back, on a table, his suit and shirt stripped away, his chest exposed. Their gloves were folded under his head for some kind of pillow. He was lying there trembling with the rifle in his hands, the weapon laid across his hips. The medical bag was open and Julie had a scalpel in her hand. Collindale was already drugged and she’d injected the soft flesh under his sternum with a local anesthetic. He felt everything all too intensely, though. He was too scared for the anesthetic to do much good. He lay there listening to his heart pound— and pretty sure, now, he could feel the monster in his chest squirming, straining, building up to erupt from him…
Even if he got it out—he remembered how it had turned on Beresford. Like it was punishing Beresford for his interference.
“You think I’m going to operate on you while you’re holding that rifle? First time you’re in pain you’re going to fire it off… .”
“Listen—don’t try and get around me—”
“No you listen!” She bent over him, her face taut with anger. “You need me for this! I just want to get it over with! You drop the rifle or you can just shoot me in the back as I fly out of here!”
He licked his lips…
Something squirmed inside him. Pushing. Bracing itself…
He shoved the rifle toward her. “Take it.”
She put the scalpel aside and took the rifle. She held it for a moment, just looking at him, and Collindale knew she was thinking maybe she should just kill him—and the thing in him at the same time. Probably, that was the right thing to do. They both knew that.
But she was trained to heal people. Not kill them. And she put the rifle aside, leaning it on the wall.
She picked up the scalpel, and took another capsule from her bag, pushed it into his mouth. “Let it dissolve slowly.”
He bit down on the oxycontin and said, “Hurry! I can feel the little bastard moving in there! Cut it out of me!”
She bent and began to cut—a thin, keening sensation— and then Collindale found he was grabbing her wrist. He simply found himself holding the blade back from the oozing incision under his breastbone—feeling bewildered to the core of his being.
“What is it? You need more painkiller? I can put you under completely but it’ll take a few—”
“No! No it…” He could hardly believe he was saying it. But the feeling was so insistent! It was demanding that he stop this. It wanted to emerge on its own. “It doesn’t want me to do this! It’s…”
She looked at him wide-eyed. “It’s… talking to you?”
“I… not in words but… it’s connecting to my… like… my nervous system… I can feel it in there, warning me…” His voice rose to a pitch of hysteria all on its own as the warning sensation intensified. “It’s warning me! It’s saying don’t do it!”
“Well what do you want me to do, dammit! You’re hurting my wrist!”
He concentrated on his hand, trying to let go of her wrist. His fingers didn’t want to respond. It was like they were someone else’s fingers, like the skin of his fingers was a glove someone else was wearing. And they were holding that scalpel away…
He focused on his fingers, he concentrated—and slowly he regained control. He just managed to open his hand, releasing her. She stepped back, letting out a long breath.
“Hurry!” he urged her. “Cut into me! Do it now!”
And that’s when his chest started to bulge—and the murkiness of the painkiller faded under the burning, tearing onslaught of pain. Bones were cracking, tissue was tearing… His chest bulged and fell back. It began to bulge again— Julie was cutting frantically and blood was spraying.
The thing was pushing, ripping—
Grimacing, Julie forced her hand into the incision, like a doctor doing a caesarian, and she grabbed the thing and pulled, pulled—slipped, lost it… and clasped it again, so that it writhed in fury in his chest and he screamed… and he could feel it being pulled out of him, through the incision, could feel it trying to hold on and digging its claws in, dragging them through his guts as she pulled it farther, farther, farther out till at last she jerked it free, holding it dripping blood upside down by its feet as if it were a baby, so that, in his shock and drugginess, he thought she was going to slap it to make it cry…
And then it whipped monkeylike up, and grabbed her wrist and she shrieked as it clambered rapidly up her arm—even as she tried to tear it away—and leapt onto her face and clutched her with its legs and claws…
One hand to the gushing wound on his breast, Collindale stood painfully, dazedly up, the room seeming to spin around him with the motion, and staggered toward the rifle, babbling as he went. “Shoot it… gotta shoot it… I’ll get it, Julie! Julie I’m sorry, I’m sorry I got you into this, I’m sorry!”
The small, bloody, newborn alien was tearing into Julie’s face so fast that shreds of flesh and splinters of bone flew as if from a chainsaw, and she staggered back, her screams muffled by its body—and then she fell on her back… convulsing, gurgling, dying…
He picked up the rifle but he was weak, bleeding heavily, drugged, and when he spun toward the alien, the gun planted against his hip, and squeezed the trigger, he aimed badly, the burst going wide of the creature that was digging its muzzle into the hole where her eyes had been, and the recoil made him stumble back…
And then he was falling backward, out of the honeycomb-shaped chamber, plunging backward and down, still squeezing the trigger so the last three rounds fired at the distant ceiling of the big room, and the additional r
ecoil against his hip, drove him down hard even in the light gravity, as if the gun were his rocket propulsion—
The ceiling receded rapidly… and Collindale slammed into the lower deck, hitting right in the middle of his back.
And he felt his spine snapping.
He lost consciousness for a few blessed moments… but awareness returned, and Collindale lay there, feeling numb and unreal, seeing… seeing a blue sky, racing with clouds, above trees undulating in the wind, back home in Vancouver. On some level he knew it was a hallucination compounded from injury and oxycontin. But he didn’t care. He wanted to believe it. He wanted to stay there, smelling the eucalyptus, and watching the geese fly over…
“There he is!” It was his sister Rinda looking down at him, her dark hair and eyes shining with life. “He’s lying over here in the grass, Mom, staring at the clouds! He’s thinking about going off into space again! What a loon!”
Yeah. Why would anyone want to go into space?
He blinked—and the sky was gone. There was only the interior of the alien spacecraft. That distant ceiling.
“Mom…” he heard himself say. “Rinda…” His lips, his tongue, all mushy, hard to speak. “Rind… a…”
A scrabbling sound came from nearby. The thing had leapt down, landing safely in the low gravity, and he could hear its claws clicking nearer on the deck.
He tried to turn over, to crawl away, but he was too weak, and his legs were in some faraway place, and refused to help. He just flopped about on his back, aware that the broken ends of his shattered spine were grinding together.
Then he lay still—and looked up to see the thing rearing over his head, upside down from this angle…
“Don’t,” he said, or tried to.
It tilted its eyeless head as if wondering why he bothered to speak. Then it opened its mouth and something pistoned out, consuming the vision in his right eye; he felt the pain of the intrusion through the opiate muddiness, the hurt slashing through like a knife through a veil, and the pain was a great rotating column of quivering bone sparkling with lightning and resonating with silent screams and he was seeing his sister and his mother screaming as gigantic silvery saliva-dripping teeth ground them up and chewed them together, mixing their bones and flesh and he knew somehow the alien was eating his brain, eating his brain while he was still alive, it was eating his brain, it was eating his brain, it was eating his—
