Infernal Sky

by Dafydd ab Hugh

  We coasted toward the open lock as if we had all the time in the universe. The lock was a port in the storm. Momentum could be a monster or a friend, so we didn’t hurry, despite the irrational child deep inside me demanding instant gratification.

  Floating to the hospital. First aid for a brave marine. We wouldn’t let Albert die. Wonder what they do with corpses in the alien base? Do they jettison them? Do they recycle them?

  No! I wouldn’t let myself think that way. Albert had helped mow down zombies, smash spider-minds, blow away steam demons, kick bony butt, and eat pumpkin pie. No freakin’ way was it going to end now.

  All we had to do was race against time and pay attention to the laws of physics. We didn’t have to run and duck, fire and fall back, or even take turns on watch. We simply had to fall through the quiet gulfs of eternity, sailing between the stars, aiming not at a barrel of poison sludge but at a black dot that grew in size until it became the open hatchway only a few feet away.

  Piece of cake.

  We cycled through the lock. I was so worried about Albert that I barely noticed that his suit had already repaired itself. Unfortunately, the regenerative powers of the Plastic Wrap did not transfer to human tissue.

  “The blue spheres,” said Fly as we stripped off our hoods.

  “Yes! Oh, my God, you’re brilliant. We’ve got to contact the medbot right away.” In another minute I’d be babbling.

  We humped back to the main section of-the base as we carried Albert between us. We’d left his suit on. It might not be a cure-all but as it resealed itself it helped stop the bleeding.

  Medbot found us!

  Its voice had always been pleasant. Now it was music to my ears: “Sears and Roebuck sent a message. Part of your unit has been damaged.”

  I slowed down, caught my breath, tried to be coherent. “We need your help. We need one of those, oh, you know—the blue spheres that help sick people.”

  “They are called soul spheres.”

  “How . . . appropriate,” whispered Albert, hanging on the edge of consciousness.

  “Yes,” Fly got into the act. “Like the one you used on Hidalgo.”

  The medbot’s voice was unemotional but not a monotone. It could have been my imagination, but I thought it sounded sorry when it said, “That was the last one.”

  “What?” I asked, knowing full well what I’d just heard.

  “This base is stripped down,” it said. “We have all the necessities, but we are operating with a minimum of supplies.”

  All this time I thought we’d been in a transgalactic Hilton. This was their idea of roughing it? Maybe that was why we were having to thaw a spaceship out of a block of ice.

  “This part of your unit will live,” said the medbot. More music to my ears. “He will require a longer recovery time without a soul sphere.”

  I was afraid to ask how long. While I pondered the question, the medbot started to take him away.

  “Wait!” Albert called out weakly. “I have to tell them something.”

  “Whatever you have to say will wait, big guy,” said Fly. “You just get on the mend.”

  “No, I’ve got to tell you this,” said Albert, his voice growing stronger. “It’ll save you valuable time dealing with Sears and Roebuck. Should have mentioned it to you earlier but the situation hadn’t changed yet.”

  “Later,” said Fly as the medbot began carting my Albert away.

  He told the medico to hold up a minute. He hit us with: “Hidalgo can talk to them while it’s just them, the same as you did, Fly. But I found out something when I had them synthesize the ring for Arlene, because we interacted with other aliens on the base. There’s a trick to getting along with Sears and Roebuck. They think we’re a group entity.”

  “I’d suspected the collectivism might go that deep,” I admitted.

  “Not collectivism,” said Albert. “They’re part of a true collective. A completely different thing! They can only understand group entities formed from powers of two—pairings of individual entities. They really can’t understand three people operating as a unit.”

  So that was why Albert brought the holopicture of himself when he joined our session with S&R! But surely they must have realized it was some kind of virtual reality trick. Or maybe S&R just perversely refused to deal with unacceptable combinations. A cultural thing.

  “You require medical attention,” said the medbot. It sounded testy. Considering the absence of blue spheres, we weren’t going to hold up Albert’s surgery any longer. The barber pole hurried away, pulling Albert along on a pad.

  “So here you are,” said Captain Hidalgo, coming over to us. He was accompanied by S&R. “I hope Corporal Gallatin recovers,” he said, watching the receding forms. “They did miracles with me, so I’m sure he’ll be all right.”

  This seemed like a good time to test Albert’s theory. Fly, that old mind reader, started the ball rolling: “Sears and Roebuck, would you mind telling us why your ship is encased in ice?”

  S&R became agitated. They did the looking-at-each-other bit, but they started shaking their heads. They weren’t in unison with each other.

  Finally they tried communicating with the three of us. “Fly and Arlene, the ship was put into icing as part of ice comet going from cometary halo so avoiding detection.” Then they started all over. “Fly and Esteban, the ship was put into icing as part of ice comet going from cometary halo so avoiding detection.” Then: “Arlene and Esteban, the ship was—”

  “Thanks, that’ll do,” said Fly. “We’ll tell the others.”

  Captain Hidalgo had the aspect of a man whose brain had been sent out to the cleaners and had received too much starch.

  * * *

  Arlene took it like a man. She should have been happy. Captain Hidalgo had made an intelligent command decision. I would have to be left behind. I’d live. I’d be fine in several months, by Earth standard time. The mission couldn’t afford to wait for my recovery. Hidalgo had needed only a few days to heal. He was the CO. I was baggage.

  And while I grew old, Arlene would stay young. Maybe that was as it should be. For all her guts and strength, she made me think of a vulnerable child. I’d always wanted to be a patriarch, and now it looked as if I’d at least look like one by the time I saw her again. If I saw her again.

  I could have predicted it before she said it: “You’re the man I want to marry. You’re my man.”

  I believed the latter. I had faith that she believed the former, so long as they were only words. As she stood by my bed and we held hands, I performed the simple calculation in my head. I’d be sixty-seven years old when she returned.

  “I love you, Arlene.”

  “That’s not what I want to hear you say.”

  I squeezed her hand and told her, “I know you really love me, Arlene. That doesn’t change what you are—a helluva marine who will do her duty, no matter what.”

  The others were waiting to say their farewells. “Call them in,” I said.

  “No. Not until we’ve settled something.”

  Probably just as well that we weren’t planning nuptials. This woman wasn’t obedient. She crawled right on the bed with me. I guess you could call it a bed, even though it was a lot better than most. Sort of an overbed or superbed.

  “Arlene?” I tried to get her attention. “Just because I’m laid up doesn’t mean the rules have changed.”

  “What was that about ‘laid’?” she asked, smiling wickedly.

  “Arlene.”

  “Albert.”

  “You’re not going to ask to make love again, are you?”

  “You will make love only to your wife,” she breathed into my ear.

  “That’s right.”

  “All right.”

  I’d been through so much lately that I no longer trusted my hearing. My eardrums still ached from my adventure outdoors. “Arlene, what did you just say?”

  “I said yes, you big dope. I’m accepting your proposal of marriage.”


  I wanted to shout yippee and dance a jig. Couldn’t do that, so I settled for crushing her in my arms and kissing her. This was no brother-sister kiss.

  While we caught our breath, my brain started firing on all cylinders again. “But what about the mission?” I asked.

  She put her head on my chest, and I ran my hand over her red carpet. Then she lifted up her face and drilled me with the most beautiful emerald-green eyes in the galaxy. “I’m still going,” she said. “But we’ll have time for the honeymoon.”

  “How long?” I dared ask.

  “Six days,” she said softly. “Captain Hidalgo says we’ll have six days. We can count on it. He’ll be marrying us.”

  I kissed her again.

  “You won’t wear the silly G-string and pasties, will you?” I asked.

  “How could I? That stuff’s back on the Bova.” She nibbled my ear.

  “But Sears and Roebuck can synthesize anything,” I protested.

  Her lips fluttered over my eyelids and came to rest on my left cheek. “They can’t synthesize everything.” Her voice was muffled against my skin.

  “Well, I would sort of like you . . . natural, you know,” I confessed, emphasizing my point by licking her all-natural neck.

  “I’ll be the girl next door,” my wife-to-be promised.

  “Need I ask if you’ve picked a best man?”

  We both laughed. It’s not as if we’d give Fly Taggart any choice. I considered the merits of asking Sears and Roebuck to whip up a tuxedo for the ultimate marine. There was something about S&R’s name that inspired the idea.

  28

  Dear Albert,

  If I write this letter quickly enough you may receive it before too many years elapse. Sears and Roebuck gave me the idea. The same technology that makes Gate travel possible, not to mention this incredible spaceship, allows me to use the sub-light post office. The laser messages don’t move much faster than the ship at max, but remember how fast the ship is moving! If we’d been crazy enough to send a message ahead of us to the Fred base so they could roll out the red carpet, we would have arrived about a half hour after they received the message.

  “Sub-light” is a term that doesn’t do these speeds justice. Traveling an inch an hour is under the speed of light. Both the Freds and our guys can travel right up to that speed. S&R’s ship will reach a maximum speed of 99.99967 miles per hour, relative to the Earth. Isn’t that incredible? Gate travel without the Gate.

  I wish you could have seen the ship from the outside when we finished melting off the ice. I swear it looked just like a cigar. Fly didn’t pick up on my reference to Frank R. Paul, the science-fiction artist from the 1930s who created a lot of stogie spaceships. That style went out of fashion in the 1950s when the flying-saucer craze started.

  I suppose there are only so many shapes and forms possible. The human race has expended so much energy trying to conceive of every possibility that we couldn’t help but get a few things right. By the way, I meant to say this to you before, so I better do it now: I do believe there is every bit as much imagination and intelligence in religion as there is in science fiction. There’d have to be. It’s just that what you take as revelation I assume to be imagination.

  Before the demons came, I thought the universe was pretty dull and predictable. It only took seeing my first zombie on Phobos to change my mind about that. Forever.

  Like this ship, for instance. I love it. Poor Fly hates it. He can’t stop bitching. I don’t mean complaining. I don’t mean kvetching. I mean bitching.

  He was spoiled by the artificial gravity on the base. I sort of regretted leaving the Bova. Zero-g is great for my tits. I forgot you don’t like that word. Breasts, I mean. When it comes to outer space, the female body is simply better designed than the male. Why do you think God did that to you poor guys? Sorry, you know I’m only kidding.

  Oh, I told you Fly was complaining, and then I went off on a tangent without telling you his problem. The Klave ship is a zero-g baby, just like the Bova. If feet could talk, mine would whimper for joy. I could spend my life in free fall. You know how I feel about that after our honeymoon. I’m so glad we found that sealed compartment in one of the zero-g areas. You needed to keep off your feet, darling.

  When Fly found out he’d be living in zero-g again, his first words were “Oh, man!” You know how irritated he becomes. Even so, Hidalgo convinced him that the ship is brilliantly designed. It’s two kilometers long. Well, you already know that. We could see this was no dinghy when it was in the ice. It has a central corridor connecting all the engine pods. There are no real compartments. Sears and Roebuck don’t believe in privacy. The Klave would be Ayn Rand’s nightmare.

  Anyway, there is no provision for spinning or any other artificial gravity. There is a very good reason for this. S&R told us there can be no gravity generators on their ship like the ones they have on the base. It’s flat-out impossible. The gravity maker where you are makes use of existing properties of matter. They say it’s impossible for a ship accelerating to near light-speed to use one of these devices. Mass increases, you know, as far as physical measurements are concerned in our local area. The Klave ship is increasing sufficient gravity on its own. In other words, if they used the gravity generator, it would be impossible to accelerate to the necessary speed. So thanks to these laws of physics, my feet and breasts win while Fly’s stomach loses.

  Don’t I write wonderful love letters, darling?

  Would you enjoy hearing some more technical stuff? Or would you rather devour every word of my wildest fantasy? Well, I don’t want to add to your frustration. So I’ll tell you more about the Fly ride.

  The chairs—yes, we have chairs—can be put in any position within the ship. They will be on the ceiling when we decelerate. Fly keeps saying they’re not as comfortable as what we had on the base. You see, I wasn’t kidding about our big tough marine being spoiled.

  S&R are proud of their ship. Until now I didn’t realize they were capable of pride. Unless I’m losing my mind, they are easier to understand when they are bragging about the ship. I may be imagining their pride, but I’d make book that the Klave have no concept of sentimentality, any more than they do of privacy. The Klave do not give ships names. I suggested they call this one the Kropotkin, after my favorite collectivist, a left-wing communitarian anarchist.

  A quick aside: did you know that S&R come from a planet with a heavier gravity than Earth? Imagine the backaches they must have under 1.5 gravity. No wonder they like a zero-g ship.

  Back to the subject of the ship, here are a few more specs. It takes three to four Earth-standard days for us to accelerate to the max, then three to four more days to bring this sucker to a full stop. When S&R said the ship moves relativistically, I asked if the Klave were more like cousins or brothers and sisters. They didn’t get the joke, but Hidalgo howled with laughter.

  We’ve learned a lot of things that would interest you, beloved. First, here’s something had been bothering Fly all along. Why did the Freds attack Earth in the first place? What was their motivation? The most they can extract from human survivors is slave labor, and slaves are expensive to maintain; it’s more economical to use machines.

  Fly and the captain and I wrestled over these problems before we laid them out to Sears and Roebuck. There are no natural resources that can’t be obtained elsewhere, and more easily, I would think. S&R told us how their side figured out that the Freds were eventually going after Earth. They did this by analyzing the Fred pattern of play up until that point. Of course, such an analysis wouldn’t indicate why the Earth was chosen as a target in the first place.

  During the tens of thousands of years when the good guys were in orbit around the Earth, watching and observing, they did their best to comprehend the attraction of what Fly calls the old mud ball.

  Hidalgo suggested there might have been a Fred observatory on Earth for even longer. For this insight, S&R pronounced us a most logical unit. That turns out to be why th
e hyperrealists only risked a small base and a single star-drive ship, the one that brought them to Earth.

  S&R admits that there is something strange about us humans, other than the problem of dealing with us in odd-number combinations. I never thought of S&R as understanding subtlety, because that seems to go with the concept of privacy, but they hinted there is something very strange about human beings. Apparently this amazing discovery fit right into the plans of the Freds. S&R didn’t want to tell us what it is!

  We played a trick on Captain S&R. Once we’d convinced ourselves that the ship was safely on automatic pilot, Hidalgo, Fly, and I surrounded the spearmint twins in a triangle and began firing rapid questions. The questions didn’t really matter. Fly asked who won the World Series. Hidalgo wanted to know if the Soviet Union would have toppled without a nudge from Ronald Reagan. I wanted to know what the outcome would be of a fight between one spider-mind and ten pumpkins.

  S&R couldn’t figure out who the hell was talking to them. They were so totally freaked at being assaulted by three entities at a time that it wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d left the ship! Let’s face it, Albert, we were torturing our new friends. But it’s not as if we had any choice. We had to have that information.

  With all of us talking at once, S&R couldn’t figure out the proper pairings of two. It must have been like finding themselves in the middle of an Escherian geometrical figure that cannot exist in the real world, or in this universe, anyway. S&R collapsed as if we’d let the air out of them and they’d decompressed.

  Fly and Hidalgo started a swearing contest. If we’d killed them, we’d buggered the mission and any hope for Earth. Fortunately, all we’d done was give them a splitting headache—like in the old TV commercials where your head hurts so much it takes two of you to feel all the pain.

  We got what we wanted—except maybe we didn’t want it after all. When S&R recovered, they told us all they knew. Humans, it turns out, are different from every other intelligent species in the galaxy. You’ll never believe what the difference is. Then again, maybe you will.