‘What do you think that is?’ Seps said, following Dece’s gaze.
‘I don’t know. Um, I could go down and have a closer look.’
‘No!’
‘All right.’ He knew he would not have gone, but he had shown Seps he wasn’t frightened. Not all the time.
They moved from the open door, followed the corridor and stopped at the next door, on the right this time. This room was much smaller, and was also covered in a layer of frost. Dece saw a large black screen with nothing on it and a square of fabric hanging below it. The room was partitioned in two; on each side stood several big metal frames with springs inside them. Dece and Seps looked at each other, until eventually Dece decided the room was safe and he crept in.
It turned out the frames were connected by several light wires that ran to the walls, but the frames did not need them for support – the frames were bolted to the deck and the walls. And anyway the wires were loose. Dece could have slipped through them and lain on the springs, but it would have been uncomfortable. Near the frames were two large black rectangular boxes set in the wall with little buttons on the side. If there had been power, Dece could have pulled the boxes out and pushed one of the buttons to see what it did. But there was no power.
‘Do they sleep there?’ Seps said.
‘Can’t be that. Not on those springs and the hard metal. Unless they don’t feel anything.’
Seps frowned at a pile of debris in the corner and touched it with her boot. Fragments of cloth flew around her, like beetles swarming for the moon, and then they scattered all over the room and filtered into the corridor.
‘Ahh!’ She slapped her arms.
‘You all right?’
‘I got it! Those little bits of material used to be mattresses that went on the frames. When the particles of ice went through the ship they chopped them all up.’
‘So they slept here? These are cabins?’ Dece frowned.
‘Maybe they hibernate. Like a seed in the frozen ground.’
‘And the ship didn’t have artificial gravity, so the wires were to keep them from floating around. It is so primitive!’
As they left the room, the ship tilted and a dead rustling sounded from the ceiling.
‘I don’t like …’ Dece licked his lips. ‘Never mind.’
They moved out of the room. Further along the corridor they found several similar cabins, and stopped at a large room, almost as big as the one with all the cubes. Big pods sprawled across the deck of this room, looking like giant bugs’ nests. Two large black rectangular boxes were set in one wall. Dece moved slowly through the doorway, stopped and stared at the nearest pod.
It would have had room for Cap, and his suit, and Seps’ Skimmer. It was wide open and its internals were polished green. A lot of straps hung down from its sides. The top was suspended above the base by loose cables attached to the ceiling.
All right, Dece thought. Don’t worry about it, it’s empty. But there were others …
He jerked around and looked at the other pods. They were all open. Seps was frowning and he smiled at her.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They are gone.’
‘They’re like our sleepers, only enormous.’
‘Yes.’ Dece stared at Seps.
Seps stared back. ‘What about the other cabins?’
There were two separate places on this ship for the crew to sleep, and they were not alike.
‘There were two different aliens on this ship,’ Dece said.
Seps shook her head. ‘No, no, it can’t be.’
‘Stop thinking they’re like us. They are aliens. They can be anything.’ He waved at the green pod. ‘Maybe there was one type, like us, that did normal things on the ship and the others could have been something like big bugs, maybe a bit stupid, but trained to fix machinery, and the first type uses them the way we use our robots.’
‘Well, I guess it could be like that.’
And he heard the quiet whisper and the shuffling of the ship in his helmet. ‘What if the bugs are still here?’
‘Stop it, Dece! The shuttle left with everyone.’
Dece was hoping she would see a stupid mistake in his argument, but …
‘Maybe it left with the smart aliens. But did they get the dumb bugs on the shuttle? There must’ve been panic when the meteor hit.’
Seps waved him away. ‘Doesn’t matter. If some people, or “bugs” didn’t make the shuttle, they died. The moment the meteor hit, or in a day or a week.’
‘Can’t you hear the sound? It’s there all the time.’ Dece looked up at the ceiling.
‘Stop it! Look at the ship. That meteor hit a long time ago. Many, many years. How can they still be alive? There’s nothing to breathe, nothing to eat.’
‘Maybe they eat anything. Copper, iron, tin, the metal that’s on this ship. Maybe they were just sleeping and we woke them.’
For a long moment Seps said nothing. Dece realised that he desperately wanted her to laugh at him. They looked at the same spot on the ceiling, and then Seps shivered. And he knew what she was hearing – that same murmur from the heart of the ship.
‘Maybe it’s just the movement of the ship with the ice,’ she said finally.
Dece stared at her and slowly shook his head. ‘No. We have to go.’ He moved towards the corridor.
‘But we haven’t seen the bridge.’
She was making this wrecked ship into a game.
‘No,’ Dece said. ‘I don’t care.’
Seps followed him, but in the corridor, when he turned towards the chasm and the Tug, Seps was still looking the other way, in the direction of the unexplored rooms and the end of the corridor, which seemed to open onto several large, gleaming squares.
‘The control bridge is just there. We might find something there for the Tug.’
Dece stopped. ‘What, for instance?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, maybe there is something of an alien …’
‘Oh no, no!’ Dece looked down the corridor and shook his head. And he moved quickly towards the chasm.
Seps tagged on reluctantly and they slid past the open doors, past the odd cabins, past the cabins with the fluttering material.
Dece felt he could hear something sliding on top of the ceiling and he clutched his cutter.
Seps slowed down as she reached the room with the jammed doorway.
Dece noticed the lag, saw her eyes. ‘No, no, come on.’
‘Just a second.’ And she slipped through the slightly open door.
The door hissed and closed.
18.
The Trap
DECE stared at the door as if it couldn’t be there.
There was just a faint crack in the doorjamb. He couldn’t see through that crack into the room beyond, but …
‘Seps! Are you all right? Can you hear me?’
‘I can hear.’
Dece swallowed. She sounded weak, like she was somewhere far away. ‘All right.’
‘What an idiot I am!’ Seps was panting.
‘What is happening in there?’
Seps was silent for a terrible moment. ‘I think I triggered the door to close. I was trying to push it open, but it wouldn’t move. Now I’m pushing at the walls around the door to see if I can hit a switch.’
‘There’s nothing happening in the room?’
He heard slow creaking over his head and whispering.
She breathed heavily. ‘Don’t frighten me, Dece. There are things. Funny things, scary things, in this room. And something is moving – I guess from the ship’s motion – but that is all. I don’t want to think about your bugs.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I want to get out of this room. Can you help?’ She tried to keep her voice cool, but there was a wobble in it.
Dece looked at the cutter and lifted it. ‘You get away from the door.’
‘Yes, all right.’
He clicked open the cutter, aimed it at the door and shook slightly. He ha
d never worked with the long mining machine before. But he had used the Telp’s cutter, hadn’t he? It should be easy enough.
Dece pushed the button and the red laser hit the door. The door didn’t change, apart from a small area that glowed. There!
‘It’s not coming through.’ Sep’s voice was strained.
‘Wait, wait.’ Dece fiddled with the button and tried again. What if the cutter couldn’t cut this metal door? Shut up, he thought.
The cutter trembled as it heated up. The laser’s beam was wider now and the red had become an intense crimson. The glow on the door radiated from the laser beam and then the centre looked like liquid.
‘It’s coming!’ Seps shouted.
‘Yes, yes!’ Dece smiled weakly. He lowered the cutter.
The centre of the door began to ooze downwards, creating a small hole. Dece could see some of the odd shapes through it.
‘We’re almost there. Don’t get in the way.’
‘Yes, all – ’ Suddenly Seps was screaming.
Dece swung the cutter away from himself. He used it to carve into the door and then the ceiling. ‘Seps! Are you all right? Seps?’
Silence.
‘Sh … I’m coming, I’m coming!’ He jerked the cutter back to the door.
It’s not the cutter, thought Dece. She knows to get out of the way. It’s worse than that. It is … Shut up.
Dece aimed at the small hole he had made and cut down towards the deck, and across. It was so slow. But now he could hear her breathe. ‘Seps?’
‘Don’t talk.’ She hissed the words.
He bit his lip and the cutter shook. He gripped it tightly and cut into the small hole to create a circle.
There are a hundred of the huge bugs on the other side of the door, thought Dece.
They’d come scrabbling for him the moment that round section fell. He would have to race for the chasm, dive to the other end of the corridor, forget about the tube and get into the Tug. Seps had to look after herself.
The circular cut was almost complete. It began to sag.
He stared at it. Get out, get out! Now!
But he shouted, ‘Ahh!’ and kicked at the round section. It spun away into the room. His eyes seemed to blur and he closed them for a flicker of an instant.
Then he charged through the hole.
He thought, Fool, fool, what have you done? You are going to die.
He rolled on the floor, his suit clinking and hissing. Looking back, he swung the cutter from his body. Seps was standing motionless away from the door and she was staring, not at him, but at something else. Something on the other side of an odd metal arch. Dece kicked himself up, waved the cutter and lurched in the direction of the arch.
I’m still alive!
And there was a bug as big as his boot, with its antennas groping. He swung the cutter at it. No, not a bug. It was a robot with a weak orange light on its head. It had an arm half in the air, but it was not moving.
Dece clicked on the cutter.
‘No, no!’ Seps waved her arm at him. ‘Don’t shoot it.’
Dece aimed the cutter at the robot, but he didn’t fire. ‘Why not?’
‘It’s dying.’
And he saw that the orange light in the nub on the head had begun to flicker. The antennas on its body flapped, and finally the orange glow disappeared.
‘It’s gone now.’ There was a shiver in Seps’ voice. ‘It came from that little door when you began to cut into the big one.’ Seps pointed at a small door at the bottom of a wall. She moved slowly towards the robot.
‘Careful!’ Dece was almost shouting.
Seps stopped and looked at him in surprise. ‘It’s all right. It used the last of the battery to come out, and that was it.’
‘I don’t know … It was charging after you before it ran out of power.’
‘That’s what I thought, but I don’t think so anymore. It came out from its little hole only when you attacked the door. And I don’t think it would have attacked us. It was only coming out to fix the door.’ Seps sat beside the robot.
Dece felt his arms tremble and tried to hide it. ‘Maybe.’
She touched the nub on the robot, dipped her helmet to its head and smiled at Dece. ‘Wonder if the aliens look a little like that.’
Dece took a long look at the robot for the first time. On the square head there were two lenses, and a slit that might have given it a voice. The rest of it was a cylinder with four different arms, and a few covered parts. The robot was probably moved by air from underneath. Dece’s mouth slowly stretched to a beaming grin.
‘It looks cuter than you,’ he said.
Seps glared at him. ‘You wouldn’t know.’
Dece lowered the cutter and moved to the robot and Seps. He wobbled the robot and tilted it to see the air holes. He was surprised at its lightness.
‘I don’t think the aliens look like this.’
‘No, I guess not. Maybe the eyes. There are only two.’
‘Big deal.’ But he looked at the dead lenses. Those eyes seemed full of sadness. ‘It’s not much, is it?’
‘Hey.’ Seps looked past the robot and noticed the quiver in Dece’s arms. She squinted through his visor to meet his eyes. ‘You didn’t think it was a harmless little robot. You thought I was being eaten by your huge bugs. But you still charged through that hole without looking.’
Dece shrugged.
‘I am sorry about the scream.’
‘All right.’
‘Thanks.’
‘All right.’
19.
The Whispering
THEY stood up from the dead robot, which was now a piece of junk. There were no bugs, there was nothing, but something had changed. Dece turned to the hole he had left in the door, then the room and then the creaking ceiling. He looked at Seps and realised she was waiting for him.
That rustle above the ceiling had almost stopped, and Dece’s arms weren’t shaking anymore. He was in charge.
Dece moved away from the robot to the large room, and Seps followed him. There were around ten individual odd things bolted to the deck. All were big, almost as big as Telp, and made from metal. In places, the metal seemed to be polished silver or a tint of gold, but hard, like steel. The metal was coated in frost. In the middle of each odd shape was a large seat, a little like the seats on the Tug’s bridge. But if Cap sat on one of them he would look like a child. And he couldn’t operate the odd things around the seat, the angled rods. And there was a large sphere that could hold Cap, Seps and him, but for what? Yet again, Dece couldn’t work out anything.
Seps moved into one of the seats and pushed a rod with her boot. Several rods around it jerked and the seat rose a little. She stumbled back, then saw a glimmer of a smile cross Dece’s face.
‘Can you work them out at all?’
Dece shook his head. ‘Maybe if I could see one of the aliens …’ He stopped, and his eyes opened wide. ‘No, I don’t want to see them.’
‘The aliens are dead.’
They moved to the hole and clambered through to the corridor.
Seps looked down the corridor towards where the ship’s bridge had to be, and hesitated. ‘What do you want to do, Dece?’
Dece looked at her. He wanted to go back to the Tug, where there were no aliens, living or dead. He listened to the creaking and the faint whispering of the ship.
‘Those sounds have quietened down a bit,’ said Seps.
Dece nodded. ‘All right. Let’s go and see the bridge.’
‘Are you sure?’
Dece glared at Seps and moved back down the corridor. He had decided to ignore the whisper. It was like the hiss from the stars.
They moved quietly along until Seps stopped before the open door at the end of corridor.
‘Yes?’ Dece said.
‘Probably there is a dead person in there.’
‘An alien.’
‘Yes.’
Dece shrugged. ‘So what? We have been looking for them
, haven’t we?’
Seps looked surprised, but nodded. She led him to the bridge.
The first thing Dece noticed was the whispering. It was louder and seemed faster, but nothing else happened.
There were five massive seats in front of a board of buttons and screens. There were no dead aliens.
Seps moved to the battery of buttons. They covered most of the broad curve of the bridge. Round buttons, square buttons, triangular buttons, red, yellow, blue and white buttons, with a symbol etched onto many of them. She touched some of them lightly, as if she could get some life into the ship.
‘Nothing,’ she said, and sat on one of the giant seats, but she couldn’t reach the buttons from there so she moved forwards.
Dece grunted. He didn’t like Seps playing with the alien board, but he thought she would laugh at him if he tried to stop her.
‘Dece, turn off your light.’
‘What? No way.’
‘Just for a moment. I think we are not seeing things because of our lights.’ And Seps’ helmet blinked out.
‘That sound seems louder.’ But Dece flicked off his light.
To Dece’s surprise, Seps was right. The buttons were glowing faintly, and reflecting off the screens and the wall. And the buttons that Seps had touched were a bit brighter than the others.
‘It’s alive.’
‘There!’ Seps gestured in the gloom.
There was a dim yellow glow at one end of the board. Dece was about to turn his own lights back on, but Seps slid from the seat towards the yellow glow and he realised his lights would kill it. He crept after her, the whispering increasing as he moved. And then he stopped.
Another sound had begun beside the whisper, more urgent and frightening. It was only a murmur in his helmet, but it was getting louder.
‘Seps …’
‘It’s not much, but it’s the only thing on this ship that is working.’ She was leaning towards the board and her face through her helmet was hideous in the yellow gleam.
She wasn’t hearing it.
‘We’ve got to put the lights on. There’s something out there.’
Outpost Page 7
