“Ignition in five seconds!” Clark called out. “Five . . . four . . . ”
From the helm, Barry ducked at a flash of light and squawked, “Where’s that thing?”
“Steer the ship!” Clark ordered. “Two! . . . One! Ignition!”
The vibrations under my feet grew to a steady quick pulse like a snare drummer increasing the marching pace. The mechanical whining eased down to a loud but consistent buzz. Atmospheric engines working, wings out—what else could go wrong to ruin our good save?
Trapped with my own disgusting problem, I sucked air through gritted teeth and held the creature tightly in my jacket, hoping it wasn’t crapping on my shoes or biting through to my skin. Clark snapped out orders, keeping his voice down to the absolute volume needed to communicate without causing any more stress. The ship’s terrified whine settled to an almost musical hum. The deck found a nearly level footing, still at a slight tilt, and began to feel like a deck with support under it . . . air. All that was left of our near-miss was a faint high-pitched whistle from deep within the engine noise, and in a moment that too was gone. Flashing lights of warning began one by one to wink off.
“Stable,” Theo finally reported. “Altitude, eight thousand fifty.”
“Shit, we’re low!” Gaylord gasped.
“Trimming,” Barry huffed out, still shaken. The activity didn’t exactly settle down, but became suddenly organized, deliberate as each crewman found his nerves and went after his own job.
“Altitude five thousand,” Theo chanted out. “Four thousand . . . thirty-five . . . ”
At the same time, Clark ordered, “Run out the stands and levelers. Hurry up.”
I felt the creature’s body heat through the fabric, only a layer or two away from my own skin. Would it bite through? Was it rabid?
“Keep holding it, Rory,” Clark called. “Barry, is that landing vector still good? You still getting beacons or do we have to eye-ball it?”
The pilot’s voice was shaky, nerve-racked. He hunched over his controls. “Beacons are still in place.” As if he didn’t quite believe it, Barry paused and repeated, “Reading landing coordinates. Jesus, that was close.”
“Cue the piloting computer and auto-thrusters for centerline adjustment. Let her take herself in.”
“A hundred to one!” Pocket called out.
“Not now, hammerhead!” Clark snapped.
It seemed to me that auto-thrust would be an automatic thing, but I’d learned that sometimes even the simplest changes had to be approved by the command officer.
“Auto-thrusters green,” Barry said, finally calmer.
“Set your lock-downs at three-two-three,” Clark went on procedurally, though from here I could see he was sweating a fountain.
“LDs . . . three-twenty-three,” Barry responded.
“Put the list sensors on auto.”
“Listing sensors on.”
“Secure from manual override.”
“Shutting down MO.”
“Secure plasma reactors and put ’em on standby. All hands, prepare for landing.”
“Clark,” I called. “Pardon me—”
“You’re doing fine, Rory. You got ’im right where you want him.”
“I want him in your shorts!”
If only I’d known what I had trapped against my ribs. All I knew right now was that it had teeth and wings. My two evil geniuses. For a few seconds it went suddenly still, which was almost more frightening than when it was squirming—then the squirming started again and slipped lower. I tilted my elbow downward to catch it, expecting a claw to sink into my leg.
Clark artfully ignored me. “Reduce speed one quarter. Cue magnetic bearings and couplers.”
From where he stood on the pilot balcony, he had a full view of the sky and atmosphere we were rushing through at what seemed to be too-high speed. The crew didn’t seem panicked anymore, so I took their cue and tried to stay calm.
It was crock. My heart hammered the animal pressed against my sternum. I couldn’t hide my agitation from it anymore than it could hide its quivering tension from me. It wasn’t relaxing. Its struggles hadn’t calmed. With every breath I took, the creature flinched and pushed outward against my arms in every possible direction.
“Fire verticals,” Clark directed. We were coming in for our landing.
This was the worst moment of landing. I’d only experienced it four times in my life and hated it every time. It was the moment between forward thrust and hovering thrust, a complete change in engineering that had to go flawlessly, or the ship could literally fall out of the sky. The ship gave us that sickening dropping sensation again, as if there weren’t enough air to hold it up, but it was just an illusion. We broke to a hover as the high-volume thrusters fired, the most powerful engines in the arsenal of aerospace. Their tremendous roar drowned out Clark’s staccato orders, but somehow the crew knew what he was saying and one by one delivered the goods to get the massive ship on the ground. It was a fast process, scary fast, not like docking a big ocean vessel, because there were only so much power and fuel to hold the bulky ship in the air. Less hovering, less waste of energy.
I sank against the bulkhead, crammed my eyes shut, and clutched my ghastly package, hoping to live and wishing to die.
There was a sharp, loud gush. The ship dropped another five feet out from under me, and I fell to meet it. Then a hard stop . . .
I waited for someone—Clark or Theo—to shout some order. Nothing happened, except the ship landed itself. Solid ground scratched under us. I felt the texture of the surface rumble through the ship and into my feet. Then I realized the final landing process must all be automatic, to keep the thrusters from trying to drive into solid ground or blowing the ship over on its side. Sensors could react a thousand times faster than human hands.
“We’re down,” Barry confirmed. He sounded whipped. Beside him up there, Gaylord’s round, brown face peeked over the railing.
Theo didn’t wait around, but spun twice to scan everything around us, then disappeared into the cargo bay, probably to check on damage. He never stayed in one place for long, I’d noticed. A first mate was a jack-of-all-trades, and Theo’s face, with its goatee and tight brown eyes, popped up everywhere high and low. He had the air of English aristocracy, but he worked like a yeoman. Pocket had told me Theo even had a title, and somewhere an estate, that his father had been knighted, but his family fortune had dwindled and the estate was being used as a hotel for whatever income it could generate. Everybody had a hard-luck story. At least, everybody aboard this ship seemed to.
On the deck, on his knees not far from me, Pocket had both hands clawed into the metal barrier grid that supported the pilot station. He peered at me through wayward strands of straw-colored hair that had pulled out of the thick ponytail. “Hundred to one,” he murmured.
“Good job, everybody,” Clark said with a sigh. “Let’s not do that anymore for the rest of our lives, eh?”
The crew rewarded him with grunts and nods.
“Let’s hear it for Rory!” Pocket panted out.
Applause broke out with a little weak cheering. “Yay, Rory!” Gaylord wheezed.
“Nice going,” Theo said, and at the same time, Barry offered, “Touchdown, man.”
“Yeah, good going,” Clark said. “You got it.”
“I’ve got it,” I gagged. “Now . . . will somebody please tell me what I’ve got?”
“Just stay there a second.”
“Somehow this is your fault.”
“Let’s do the housekeeping,” he went on to his crew. “Where’s Theo? Wasn’t he here?”
“He went into the bay,” I choked.
“Okay, everybody, do your lock-downs and secure from motive power. Check the throttle bearings and flat-line the Cobb-coils. Tell Theo to down-flow the inhibitors and assign somebody to check for crazing. I don’t want any hairline breaks causing stresses when we launch. Have Gary and Mark look at the zinc disks and the loading transmission
. Tell Kip to secure the galley. Gaylord, do a complete magnetological diagnostic on all systems. Barry, re-set the relief valves, and Pocket, check the cargo for damage and deployability. Get somebody to lube the king posts, safety winches, and lifting gear. I’ll give you till thirteen-thirty to get me reports of stability and readiness. And somebody go see how badly we shook up the Marines.”
“Hope we didn’t scare ’em,” Pocket commented as he got to his feet.
For the first time in several minutes, Clark’s eyes fell on me. Pretty soon they were all looking at me and my . . . package.
Here I was, sucking air in little gulps, lips curling, both legs braced, knees bent, and my spine pressed against the hatch. I held perfectly still with my arms clamped and knees tight around the squirming package inside my coat.
From my left periphery, the ship’s medical intern slipped toward me. She was a short, round girl with shoulder-length blonde hair and manly features, but enormous sweet blue eyes. She always seemed to be interested in talking to me during the awake parts of the trip.
“Something you need to tell us, Bonnie?” I asked through my teeth.
She raised her hands, but didn’t touch me or my jacket yet. “Don’t smother her, okay? Let her have some air?”
“What is digging its way through my undershirt on its way to my chest hair?”
She turned pink in the face. “Can I just take her?”
“‘Her’?”
She gathered the squirming bundle out of my arms and coiled her own arms around it. “Thanks,” she murmured. “See ya.”
“Bonnie!” Clark snapped.
“Bye.” She tried to push behind me toward the hatch with her bundle.
Clark dropped down the short ladder and only had to make a half turn to end up blocking her way. “Is that yours?”
“Well . . . ”
“Why do you have a steroidal mouse aboard this ship?”
The girl hid behind a hank of blonde hair that had fallen in her face. “You always encourage us to bring creature comforts with us—”
“Not actual creatures, you idiot. Is this where my papayas have been disappearing to?”
Bonnie shifted from foot to foot. “Um . . . we ran out of apples. You know, you didn’t have to panic. She was just looking for a place to land. She’s hand-raised by humans, and if somebody had just stuck your arm straight out like this, she’d have just landed on you perfectly.”
“Not on me,” I grumbled.
We flinched as the creature jolted in Bonnie’s arms and its head popped out of the folds of my jacket. A triangular head, big black eyes and a little nose, ruffled fur and little tiny black hands trying to pull it out of the jacket. Damned if it didn’t look like a Pomeranian.
Keeping my newly claimed distance, I asked, “What is that?”
“Haven’t you ever seen a flying fox?” she asked.
“That’s no fox.”
“Isn’t it obviously a . . . ”
Clark growled, “A flipping giant bat.”
He suddenly noticed that everybody was standing around us, peering at the critter, and nobody was jumping to do all those lock-ups and coil-things and up-downs.
“Hey, is this a show?” he said. “Get cracking!”
Like ripples in a pond, they dispersed. Bonnie would’ve gone too, except Clark blocked her way intentionally.
“A bat . . . ” I found my feet and put a step between me and Bonnie’s bundle. “What’s it doing out in space with us?”
“Good question.” Clark zeroed in on Bonnie. “Well?”
She blushed. “Well . . . who could I get to take him while I’m in space for so long? Isn’t it pretty good that he never gets out of my cabin?”
“He never gets out?” he mocked. “Where’d you get that thing?”
“Remember that cute guy who hitched from the Doyle-Gray system on the last voyage? I fused his broken wrist?”
“That greasy-haired punk who liked you?”
“He has a lot of exotic animals, y’know, that he rescued from stupid people who think they make good pets? He had this baby flying fox, and it was too young and all, and what was I supposed to do?”
“Are you telling me you’re this bat’s mama?”
“She’s kinda cute, isn’t she?”
“Girl, blow this thing out the airlock!”
“You don’t really want to kill her! Did she really do anything so wrong? Does she take up that much space?”
“Give or take the five-foot wingspan,” I commented.
“Four fee—hee—hee—”” Bonnie started to cry and in seconds was sobbing inconsolably. She was such a studious and competent medic, hardly making a peep most of the time, that it seemed odd to find out she was really a girl. She hugged her bat, which put its little curiously human black hand on her cheek as if to comfort her.
“It’s not a Chihuahua,” Clark told her. “Girl, do you have to be such a turkey? Was that creepy thing in the cryotube with you?”
She nodded.
The fox bat squirmed again and this time flopped out an entire wing—a long segmented black leathery membrane that hugged my jacket’s folds as Bonnie tried to keep control. I noticed her big blue eyes—Bonnie’s, not the bat’s—ranging to meet mine whenever she wasn’t obliged to be looking at her captain’s.
“Do you want your coat back?” she offered tentatively, and started to pick at her bundle.
I protested, “Uh . . . maybe you should just keep it . . . ”
“Don’t worry. Butterball doesn’t have fleas or anything.”
“Fleas . . . ” My stomach churned as she disengaged the fox bat from my jacket, claw by claw and fold by fold.
“No, no, she’s been completely decontaminated, just like everything aboard. I did it myself.”
“You’d have to. ‘Butterball’?”
Gaylord and Pocket appeared on either side of Clark to have a look at the monster we’d just conquered. With Gaylord hiding behind him, Pocket screwed up his face. “What’s this? How’d it get into the salon?”
Bonnie shot back, “I asked you not to go in my cabin, Pocket!”
“You didn’t inform me your cabin was Pandora’s box! We log the magnetic coil readouts before we can land. They’re in your cabin!”
Gaylord piped up with, “I had a stroke when this came flying out!”
She spun to glare at him. “Next time, stay out.”
“I guess you guys should ask first before you go in the infirmary,” Clark supported.
“Who’s gonna check the feeds?” Gaylord asked.
Clark shrugged. “I’ll check ’em.”
“You’re the captain!” Pocket protested. “If you do our jobs, who’s gonna do your job?”
“Rory here’ll do it.”
“Yeah. Rory. Right.” Annoyed and exhausted, Pocket slipped through the main hatch to get back to doing what should’ve been the work of a normal landing sequence. Gaylord punished Bonnie with one more disturbed glare before he too stepped out into the main bay.
I barely managed to keep my pistol down as Bonnie dropped my jacket and the fox-faced bat flipped over to hang from her arm as if she were a tree branch. It seemed content to hang from Bonnie’s wrist with its bony hind claws firmly gripping the neoprene of her service tunic’s protective sleeves. In the air it had spread its wings wider than the mess table was long. Now it coiled those wings around its body, just like the vampires in the stories, and stared at me and Clark with its doggie eyes.
Clark glowered at it, then again at Bonnie. “Take it away. Put it away. Lock it up. I don’t want to see it again. From now on and for the rest of its life, you find some wicked witch to baby-sit that thing.”
“I promise,” Bonnie said. She raised her arm, straining from the not-inconsiderable weight of the bat. “She’s friendly. She’s not wild at all. See?”
She offered me a chance to—what, pet the thing?
I shrank back. “I hate things that fly.”
“What
? Like bluebirds and butterflies?”
“If they fly and they bite, I hate ’em.”
“But she’s cute just hanging here, isn’t she? Admit it.”
“Yeah, she’s adorable,” Clark interrupted. “I don’t want to see one drop of guano on this ship, you got that?”
Without another word, Bonnie ducked through the aft hatch, heading toward the area where our bunks were laid out in little one-person compartments. Clark drew a long breath and took a moment to check his palm-link unit to the ship’s systems. Things must be okay now despite the close call, because he squinted, nodded, and pocketed the device in his vest pocket. Then he looked at me, burying a hint of embarrassment.
I slumped back to sit on the edge of the mess table. “Long, quiet break in space, you said. Milk run, you said.”
“Clam up, I said.” He stepped past me to a comptech panel, one of many throughout the ship that allowed for almost total instant access to the ship’s systems. He’d told me once before that, if necessary, one person could run the whole ship. Not maintain it, but run it for a while.
He spoke into the panel. “Official log access, code X1. Specialty Spacefaring Container Vessel Vinza, PlanCom Con-tract Seven-seven-four. Planet Rosamond 6 achieved, July 14, thirteen hundred hours, ten minutes, ah . . . four seconds. Safe landing on predetermined coordinates, no incidents. Clark Sparren, Master, authorization SP405. Log, secure, and send.”
“Log secure,” the computer responded. “Sending voyage report now. Reporting to Nebula Habitation Division, PlanCom, Incorporated, Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you and have a pleasant watch.”
“Thanks.” Clark punched a pattern on the control panel, then said, “Theo, put up all the scanners and scout the landscape. We’ll have a look around before we go out.”
“On it,” Theo answered from somewhere in the ship.
“I love getting to this moment,” Clark commented. “Didn’t expect it to be so weird, though.”
“‘No incidents,’” I echoed.
“Quit repeating what I say.”
“That was the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen, and I’m old.”
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 23
