Outpost
Page 11
‘The – ’ Seps began.
‘The geysers!’ Dece said it.
‘Yes, yes.’ Cap nodded. ‘We’re going to orbit until Cotal is away from the Base.’
The Tug sat above the Dreaming Sea and Seps’ Monsters tried to clutch at it, until Ord finally rolled and the sea went back to its quiet dreams. Then Cap tapped a button, a few jets fired and the Tug gently eased down. In the screen, Dece watched the laser beam from the stern moving across the mountains. The beam showed where the stern was pointing. Dece watched it move from the Peak to the track.
Ord rolled, and the Tug dipped at the same time, revealing the metal slab outside the Base, which Boss had positioned for the Tug’s landing.
The beam wandered near the Dreaming Sea.
Dece’s eyes widened in horror. If they hit the Dreaming Sea it would be terrible.
But one jet spurted, and the beam found the slab and stayed on it while the other jets lowered the Tug, tipping it until its hard base touched down.
Dece felt the hull crunch softly as they came to a stop. He looked at Seps and slowly his lips grew across his face.
‘Hey,’ he said.
‘We’re here,’ said Seps.
‘Yes,’ Dece looked at his arms and saw they were trembling, but he shrugged.
‘That’s it.’ Cap closed the computers and stepped from the controls. ‘Come on, we have to leave the Tug outside now.’
Outside the Tug, Seps tapped it in affection. ‘Thank you. We’ll see you soon.’
Dece shook his head. She had to make things into living creatures. First the monsters, and now the Tug was a pet. It was only there to get clean like they were, to make sure they didn’t bring anything dangerous onto the Ord Base, and that was all.
He followed the others and stopped with them outside the door to the first airlock, where they were sprayed with chemicals. Inside the airlock was a small capsule. They took off their space suits while the capsule slid across the floor and took them up to another airlock inside the Base. As the capsule rose, it sprayed more chemicals over them and when they put their suits in a special cone they were heated to red hot.
Then finally they moved to the interior, but there was still a thin screen between them, Boss and the normal area. The screen was a shield.
‘At last!’ Boss said, pressing against the partition.
‘Wouldn’t like to go through that again,’ Cap said. ‘And we are stuck here for a week just in case. But it doesn’t matter really.’
‘What?’ She looked at him with alarm.
‘No, no, I don’t mean we are so full of bugs that the system can’t clean us. We triggered a message from the ship to its aliens’ civilisation.’ He hesitated. ‘I did think of pulling the ship from the rings to orbit it around Ord.’
‘With only one engine?’
‘The ship was breaking in the rings and it is of major importance to us.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No.’
There was a moment of silence.
Cap glanced at Seps and Dece and sighed. ‘There is something that is more important.’
‘Ah. I’m glad. But Control won’t like you.’
‘Yes. Well, we’ll fix the Tug’s Two Engine and get back to the ship and pull it back to Ord. We are hoping that it will hang on until then.’
Boss looked at him. ‘You’ve changed.’
‘I think that ship changed everyone.’
Dece nodded.
‘You were saying the ship was sending messages.’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘I think the ship was telling their Control that we were on board.’
‘And?’
‘So the aliens and our people are sending a ship. We don’t know which one will get here first.’
Boss stared at her family. ‘Oh … oh.’
Cap shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t like that. We saw the alien and it’s not bad. Really. He had a lot of bones; on his arms he had little bones. But you get used to it. Trust me.’
Boss pressed further into the screen. ‘Well, I may have to, won’t I?’
Cap moved his arm. ‘l can’t work out how those little bones built things. But they did.’
Cap slapped his long tentacle on the window. Boss looked at him and put hers against the other side of it, pressing her suckers almost to touch his. ‘Five bony things at the end of each arm, think of that.’
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