Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by James Tiptree Jr.

  People are jostling past him, it’s the EVA team, suited and ready to go out. Chief George Brokeshoulder’s suit is a work of art, painted with blazing Amerind symbols. The last man by punches Aaron’s arm—Bruce Jang, giving him a mean wink through his gold-washed faceplate. Aaron watches them file down into the EVA blister lock, remembering the same thing three weeks ago when they had gone out to bring in China Flower with Lory unconscious inside. This time all they have to do is reel up the tether. Risky enough. The rotational mechanics could send a man into space, Aaron thinks; he is always awed by skills he doesn’t have.

  A videoscreen comes to life, showing spinning stars. A space suit occults them; when it passes, three small yellow lights are moving toward a blackness—the helmet lights of the team going down to China Flower far below. Aaron’s gut jumps; an alien is out there, he is about to meet an alien. He blinks, begins to sort and assemble the extensor mounts on which his sensors will be intruded into the scouter’s cargo hold. As he does so, he notices faces peering at him through the vitrex of the nearest access lock. He waves. The faces, perceiving that the scenario has not yet started, go away. It will be, Aaron realizes, a long afternoon.

  By the time he and Ing have lined up their equipment, all nonoperational people except the suit team have left the corridor. The hull has been groaning softly; China Flower is rising to them on her winch. Suddenly the wall beside him clanks, grinds reverberatingly—the port probes engage, the grinding stops. Aaron shivers involuntarily: the alien is here.

  As the EVA lock cycle begins flashing, Tim Bron’s voice says on the audio, “All hands will now suit up.”

  The EVA team is coming back inside. The suit men work down the corridor, checking and paying out the umbilicals as neatly as they can. It’s going to be cramped working. The suit team reach him last. As he seals in he sees more faces at the side lock. The videoscreens are all on now, giving a much better view, but still the faces remain. Aaron chuckles to himself; the old ape impulse to see with the living eye.

  “All nonoperational personnel will now clear the area.”

  The EVA team is lined up along the wall opposite China Flower’s personnel hatch. The plan is to open this first in order to retrieve the scout ship’s automatic records of the alien’s life-processes. Is it still alive in there? Aaron has no mystic intuitions now, only a great and growing tension in his gut. He makes himself breathe normally.

  “Guards, secure the area.”

  The last corridor entrances are dogged tight. Aaron sees a faceplate turned toward him three stations up the XB line. The face belongs to Lory. He flinches slightly; he had forgotten she would be here. He lifts his gloved hand, wishing he was between her and that cargo port.

  The area is secure, the guards stationed. George Brokeshoulder and two other EVA men move up to open the lock coupled to China Flower’s personnel port. Aaron watches the close-up on the overhead screen. Metal clinks, the lock hatch slides sideways. The EVA men go in carrying vapor analyzers, the hatch rolls shut. Another wait. Aaron sees the XB people tuning their suit radios, realizes the EVA men are reporting. He gets the channel: “Nominal . . . Atmosphere nominal (crackle, crackle) . . .” The hatch is sliding back again, the men come out accompanied by a barely perceptible fogginess. Lory looks back at him again; he understands. This is the air she had breathed for nearly a year.

  The ship’s tapes are being handed out. The alien is, it appears, alive.

  “Metabolic trace regular to preliminary inspection, envelope unchanged,” Jan Ing’s voice comes on the audio. “Intermittent bioluminescence, two to eighty candlepower.” Eighty candlepower, that’s bright. So Lory hadn’t lied about that, anyway. “A strong peak coinciding with the original docking with Centaur . . . a second peak occurred, yes, about the time the scout ship was removed from its berth.”

  That would be about when Tighe did—or didn’t—open the container, Aaron thinks. Or maybe it was stimulated by moving the ship.

  “One of the fans which circulate its atmosphere is not operating,” the XB chief goes on, “but the remaining fans seem to have provided sufficient movement for adequate gas exchange. Its surface atmosphere requires continuous renewal, since it is adapted to constant planetary wind. It also exhibits pulselike internal pressure changes—”

  Aaron’s mind is momentarily distracted by the vision of himself stepping out into planetary wind, a stream of wild unrecycled air. That creature in there dwells on wind. A podlike mass about four meters long, Lory had described it. Like a big bag of fruit. Squatting in there for a year, metabolizing, pulsing, luminescing—what else has it been doing? The functions of life: assimilation, excitation, reproduction. Has it been reproducing? Is the hold full of Coby’s tiny monsters waiting to pounce out? Or ooze out, swallowing us all? Aaron notices he has drifted away from his decontaminant switches; he moves back.

  “The mass is constant, activity vectors stable,” Jan concludes.

  So it hasn’t been multiplying. Just squatting there. Thinking, maybe? Aaron wonders if those bioluminescence peaks would correlate with any phenomena on Centaur. What phenomena? Tighe-sightings, maybe, or nightmares? Don’t be an idiot, he tells himself; the imp in his ear replies that those New England colonists didn’t correlate ocean currents and winter temperatures, either. . . . Absently he has been following the EVA team’s debate on whether to cut open the viewport to the alien that Lory welded shut. It is decided not to try this but to proceed directly to the main cargo lock.

  The team comes out, and the men assigned to the extension probes pick up their equipment, cables writhing in a slow snake dance. Bruce and the EVA chief undog the heavy cargo hatch. This is the port through which the scout ship’s groundside equipment, their vehicles and flier and generator, were loaded in. The hatch rolls silently aside, the two men go into the lock. Aaron can see them on the videoscreen, unsealing the scouter’s port. It opens; no vapor comes out because the hold is unpressurized. Beyond the suited figures Aaron can see the shiny side of the cargo module in which the alien is confined. The sensor men advance, angling their probes into the lock like long-necked beasts. Aaron glances up at another screen which shows the corridor as a whole and experiences an odd oceanic awareness.

  Here we are, he thinks, tiny blobs of life millions and millions of miles from the speck that spawned us, hanging out here in the dark wastes, preparing with such complex pains to encounter a different mode of life. All of us, peculiar, wretchedly imperfect-somehow we have done this thing. Incredible, really, the ludicrous tangle of equipment, the awkward suited men, the precautions, the labor, the solemnity—Jan, Bruce, Yellaston, Tim Bron, Bustamente, Alice Berryman, Coby, Kawabata, my saintly sister, poor Frank Foy, stupid Aaron Kaye—a stream of faces pours through his mind, hostile or smiling, suffering each in his separate flawed reality: all of us. Somehow we have brought ourselves to this amazement. Perhaps we really are saving our race, he thinks, perhaps there really is a new earth and heaven ahead. . . .

  The moment passes; he watches the backs of the men inside China, still struggling with the module port. The sensor men have closed in, blocked the view. Aaron glances up at the bow end of the corridor where Yellaston and Tim Bron stand. Yellaston’s arm is extended stiffly to the top of his console. That must be the evacuation control; if he pulls it the air ducts will open, the corridor will depressurize in a couple of minutes. So will the alien’s module if it’s open. Good; Aaron feels reassured. He checks his own canister-release switch, finds he has again strayed forward and moves back.

  Confused exclamations, grunts are coming over the suit channel; apparently there is a difficulty with the module port. One of the sensor men drops his probe, moves in. Another follows. What’s the trouble?

  The screen shows nothing but suit backs, the whole EVA team is in there—Oh! Sudden light, cracks of radiance between the men silhouetting them blue against a weird pink light—Is it fire? Aaron’s heart jumps, he clambers onto a stanchion to see over heads. Not fire, there’s no
smoke. Oh, of course, he realizes—that light is the alien’s own luminescence! They have opened the module.

  But why are they all in there, why aren’t they falling back to push the sensors in? Wide rosy light flashes, hidden by bodies. They must have opened the whole damn port instead of just cracking it. Is that thing trying to come out?

  “Close it, get out!” Aaron calls into his suit mike. But the channel is a bedlam of static. Everybody is crowding forward toward that hatch, too. That’s dangerous. “Captain!” Aaron shouts futilely. He can see Yellaston’s hand still on the panel, but Tim Bron seems to be holding on to his arm. The EVA men are all inside China Flower, inside the module even, it’s impossible to tell. A pink flare lights up the corridor, winks out again.

  “Move back! Get back to your stations!” Yellaston’s voice cuts in on the command channel override and the intercom babble goes dead. Aaron is suddenly aware of pressure around him, discovers that he is all the way up at the XB stations, being crowded by someone behind. It’s Akin’s face inside the safety guard visor. They disengage clumsily, move back.

  “Go back, to your stations! EVA team, report.”

  Aaron is finding movement oddly effortful. He wants very much to open his stifling helmet.

  “George, can you hear me? Get your men out.”

  The screen is showing confused movement, more colored flashes. Is somebody hurt? There’s a figure, coming slowly out of the hatch.

  “What’s going on in there, George? Why is your helmet open?”

  Aaron stares incredulously as the EVA chief emerges into the corridor—his faceplate is open, tipped back showing his bronze ax-shaped face. What the hell is happening? Did the alien grab them? George’s arm goes up, he is making the okay signal; the suit-to-suit channel is still out. The others are coming out behind him, the strange light shining on their backs, making a great peach-colored glow in the corridor. Their visors are open, too. But they seem to be all right, whatever happened in there.

  The screen is showing the module port; all Aaron can make out is a big rectangle of warm-colored light. It seems to be softly bubbling or shifting, like a light show—globes of rose, yellow, lilac—it’s beautiful, really. Hypnotic. They should close it, he thinks, hearing Yellaston ordering the men to seal their helmets. With an effort Aaron looks away, sees Yellaston still by his station, his arm rigid. Tim Bron seems to have moved away. It’s all right, nothing has happened. It’s all right.

  “Get those suits closed before I depressurize!”

  The EVA chief is slowly pulling his faceplate down, so are the others. Their movements seem vague, unfocused: One of them stumbles over the biopsy equipment. Why doesn’t he pick it up? Something is wrong with them. Aaron frowns. His brain feels gassy. Why aren’t they carrying out the program, doing something about the bioluminescence? It’s probably all right, though, Yellaston is there. He’s watching.

  At this moment he is jostled hard. He blinks, recovers balance, looks around. Jesus—he’s in the wrong place—everybody is in the wrong place. The whole corridor is jamming forward of where it’s supposed to be, staring at that marvelous glow. The guards—they’re not by the ports! Something is not all right at all, Aaron realizes. It’s that light, it’s doing something to us! Close the port, he wills, trying to get back to his station. It’s like moving in water. The emergency switch—he has to reach it, how did he ever get so far away? And the ports, he sees, the vitrex is crowded with faces, people are in the access ramps staring into the corridor. They’ve come from all over the ship. What’s wrong? What’s happening to us?

  Cold fear bursts up in his gut. He catches the EVA lock and clings to it, fighting an invisible slow tide. Part of him wants to push his helmet off and run forward to the radiance coming from that port. People ahead of him are opening their visors—he can see Jan Ing’s sharp Danish nose.

  “Stand away from that port!” Yellaston shouts. At that Jan Ing darts forward, pushing people aside. “Stop,” Aaron yells into his useless mike, finds himself opening his own visor, moving after Jan. Voices, sounds, fill his ears. He grabs another stanchion, pulls himself up to look for Yellaston. The captain is still there; he seems to be struggling slowly with Tim Bron. The light is gone now, hidden by a press of bodies around the port. That thing in there is doing this, Aaron tells himself; he is terrified in a curious unreal way, his head is singing thickly. He is also angry with those people down there—they are going in, blocking it. Lost! But is it they who are lost or the wonderful light?

  Someone bumps breast-to-breast with him, pulling at his arm. He looks down into Lory’s blazing face. Her helmet is gone.

  “Come on, Arn! We’ll go together.”

  Primal distrust sends an icicle into his mind; he grabs her suit, anchors himself to a console with his other arm. Lory! She’s in league with that thing, he knows it, this is her crazy plot. He has to stop it. Kill it! Where is his emergency release? It’s too far, too far—

  “Captain!” he shouts with all his strength, fighting Lory, thinking, two minutes, we can get out. “Depressurize! Dump the air!”

  “No, Arn! It’s beautiful—don’t be afraid!”

  “Dump the air, kill it!” he yells again, but his voice can’t override the confusion. Lory is yanking on his arm, her exultant face fills him with sharp fright. “What is it?” He shakes her by the belt. “What are you trying to do?”

  “It’s time, Arn! It’s time, come on—there’re so many people—”

  He tries to get a better grip on her, hearing metal clang behind him and realizes too late he has let go his hold on the console. But her words are now making a kind of sense to him—there are too many people, it is important, quite important to get there before something is all used up. Why is he letting them hide that light? Lory has his hand now, drawing him toward the press of people ahead.

  “You’ll see, it will all be gone, the pain. . . . Arn dear, we’ll be together.”

  The beauty of it floods Aaron’s soul, washes all fear away. Just beyond those bodies is the goal of man’s desiring, the fountain—the Grail itself maybe, the living radiance! He sees an opening by the wall, pulls Lory through—and is suddenly squeezed by more bodies from the side, a wall of people flooding out of the access port. Aaron fights to hold his ground, hold Lory, only dimly aware that he is struggling against familiar faces—Åhlstrom is beside him, smiling orgasmically, he pushes past Kawabata, ducks under somebody’s arm. As he does, a force slams their backs—he is clouted into something entangling and falls down under an XB analyzer still clutching Lory’s wrist.

  “Arn, Arn, come on!”

  Legs are going by him. It was Bustamente who hit him, forging past followed by a forest of legs. They have all come here to claim the shining glory in the port! Wildly enraged, Aaron struggles up, falls again with his own leg deep in a web of cables.

  “Arn, get up!” She jerks at him fiercely. But he is suddenly calmer, although he does not cease to wrench at his trapped leg. There is a small intercom screen by his head, he can see two tiny struggling figures—Yellaston and Tim Bron, their helmets gone. Dreamlike, tiny . . . Tim breaks away. Yellaston nods once, and fells Tim from behind with a blow of both locked fists. Then he slowly steps over the fallen man and goes offscreen. Pink light flares out.

  They have all gone in there, Aaron realizes, heartbroken. It has called us and we have come—I must go. But he frowns, blinks; a part of him has doubts about the pull, the sweet longing. It feels fainter down here. Maybe that pile of stuff is shielding me, he thinks confusedly. Lory is yanking at the cables around his legs. He pulls her in to him.

  “Lor, what’s happening to them? What happened”—he cannot recall the Chinese commander’s name—“what happened to your, your crew?”

  “Changed,” she is panting. Her face is incredibly beautiful. “Merged, healed. Made whole. Oh, you’ll see, hurry—Can’t you feel it, Arn?”

  “But—” He can feel it all right, the pull, the promising urgency, but he fee
ls something else too—the ghost of Dr. Aaron Kaye is screaming faintly in his head, threatening him. Lory is trying to lift him bodily. He resists, fearing to be drawn from his shielded nook. The corridor around them is empty now, but he can hear people in the distance, a thick babbling down by that hatch. No screams, nothing like panic. Disregarding Lory, he cranes to get a look at the big ceiling screen. They are all there, milling rather aimlessly, he has never seen so many people pressed so close. This is a medical emergency, he thinks. I am the doctor. He has a vision of Dr. Aaron Kaye getting to the levers that will seal that cargo hatch, standing firm against the crowd, saving them from whatever is in that hold. But he cannot; Dr. Aaron Kaye is only a thin froth of fear on a helpless, lunging desire to go there himself, to fling himself into that beautiful warm light. He is going to be very ashamed, he thinks vaguely, tied here like Ulysses against the siren call, huddling under an analyzer bench while the others—What? He studies the screen again, he can see no apparent trouble, no one has fallen. The EVA men came out all right, he tells himself. What I have to do is get out of here.

  Lory laughs, pulling at his legs; she has freed him, he sees. He is sliding. Effortfully he reaches into his suit, finds the panic syringe.

  “Arn dear—” Her slender neck muscles are exposed; he grabs her hair, seats the spray. She wails and struggles maniacally, but he holds on, waiting for the shot to work. His head feels clearer. The aching pull is less; maybe all those people are blocking it somehow. The thought hurts him. He tries to disregard it, thinking, if I can get across the corridor, into that access ramp, I can seal it behind me. Maybe.

  Suddenly there is movement to his left—a pair of legs, slowly stepping by his refuge. Pale gold legs he recognizes.

  “Soli! Soli, stop!”

  The legs pause, a small hand settles on the overturned stand beyond him. Just within reach—he can spring and grab her, letting go of Lory—to reach her he must let Lory go. He lunges, feels Lory pull away and clutches her again. He falls short. The hand is gone.