by Nancy Kress
In just one more minute he would go, as soon as he remembered just what it was that Brandon had done to make a rescue.
* * *
There it was. In the last cupboard she opened, the only one locked. She smashed the lock with the crowbar, smearing Wolski’s blood onto the metal door.
A part of her mind noted that she had become somebody else, somebody who could do these things without flinching. Adrenaline. Cortisone. Amygdala activation.
Necessity.
She had expected the ketamine and other anesthetics, although not in such large quantities. What she had not expected was the large, zippered leather case. But it made sense. Stubbins had not known, because nobody knew, what fauna might exist on World. And Stubbins was a man who believed in thorough preparation.
SURE-PRO VETERINARY TRANQUILIZER SYSTEMS said the lettering on the leather case. Inside were two pistols, syringe darts in graduated sizes, CO2 cylinders, and a puff sheet with maximum hype and minimum directions.
Best and most versatile dart pistol ever made!
Allows user to safely inject an animal without close and dangerous encounters!
Fingertip muzzle velocity control!
Rotating rear barrel port for quick and efficient loading!
Virtually silent!
Made in America!
“The best product I know—I use it all the time!”—James R. Strople, Chief Animal Control Officer, Colorado
And in much smaller letters:
Individual response to tranquilizing agents may vary widely.
Proper certification is necessary to administer any type of chemical immobilization.
Strangled laughter rose in Marianne; she recognized it as hysteria. A second sheet of paper included a table of suggested doses for various tranquilizing agents on different animals. Hands willed into steadiness, she followed the directions to load a CO2 cylinder, good for six shots, and a dart with the ketamine dosage for a black bear. She practiced ejecting and loading darts, then put four more in her pocket.
How long did she have? How long did it take for a blue dot launched in Russia to get within firing range of a green dot launched in Pennsylvania? When both “pilots” had to learn how to steer their ships?
Nonetheless, she took the time to practice-fire a dart. She was startled by the force with which the syringe left the pipe and buried itself in Wolski’s dead arm.
Bile rose in her throat.
No time, no time.
She reloaded and ran from the lab through the storage bay. Carefully she cracked the door to the main cabin and peered out. Empty.
On the wall screen, the blue and green dots closed in on each other.
* * *
Grandma walked past real fast, without seeing Colin peeking out from behind the pile of boxes. All the air went out of him. Grandma was okay! He didn’t have to rescue her, and she was okay!
He waited to see what would happen next. But all that happened was Grandma went out of the storage place back to the big cabin, holding something that Colin couldn’t see very well.
When everything was quiet again, Colin crept out from behind the boxes. Behind the other door, mice squeaked and moved. He wished he knew what they were saying to each other. Something had happened in the mouse room, and curiosity took him. He tiptoed to the door and opened it.
A weird smell, not mousy. He inched into the room.
A man lay on the floor. Blood ran out of his head in little rivers. So much blood! It was the same man Colin had seen before in the big cabin. Somebody had killed him. It must have been Grandma, because nobody else had been in here.
If Grandma had killed the man, then he must be very bad. Maybe he was going to hurt the mice.
Colin crept closer. He’d never seen a dead person before. But it wasn’t really gross because this had been a bad man. Colin squatted on his heels, looking carefully, so he could tell Jason and Luke exactly what a dead bad person looked like. He had a thing sticking up out of him; it looked like the little blue things that popped up on a turkey when it was all roasted and ready to come out of the oven. Did everybody have those things in them, to pop up when they died? Maybe Jason would know.
But what had the man been going to do to the mice that made Grandma kill him? It must have been really bad. Colin left the corpse and went over to the mouse cages. The mice weren’t Mus, they were like the other one that Jason and Colin and Luke and Ava had seen in the woods: grayish-brownish-reddish with long black stripes down their back. Their cute little ears twitched.
What if the bad man had other bad people to help him hurt the mice? Pretty soon, probably, the Venture would go back to Earth. More of Mr. Stubbins’s people would come aboard. Some of them might also be mouse-hurters. And there weren’t enough mice left on Earth—everybody said so!
Colin stood on one foot, chewed on his bottom lip, and thought hard. He hadn’t had to rescue Grandma. But he needed to recue something. Mice shouldn’t be hurt just because they were little. And probably they didn’t like the smell of the bad man’s blood any more than Colin did.
One by one, Colin opened the mouse cages. Some mice stayed inside but some, especially those in the cages closest to the floor, scampered right out. Then, because they were so cute, Colin scooped up two mice and put them in his pocket. They just fit.
He opened the door and made it stay open with a stool he dragged across the floor. A few mice ran out the lab door, toward the smells of food farther into the ship.
* * *
Softly Marianne tried the bridge door: locked from the inside. She would have to get Judy to open it. But how? Over the wall screen Marianne could hear what was said on the bridge, but Judy had told her that was one-way communication. And of course, Judy had no idea what Marianne was going to do. Judy just hoped Marianne would do something.
Beyond the door, Stubbins said, “Time until we’re in range?”
Wilshire said, “Another half hour, if everybody holds speed and direction.”
“Judy—any indication that this boat is gonna jump into hyperspace or anything like that?”
“I told you, Jonah, we have no fucking idea. I’m still trying to figure out what the drive is already doing, let alone what it will do.”
“Well, keep trying,” Stubbins said, and Marianne heard the dangerous edge in his voice. “Eric, NASA still jabbering at us?”
“Yeah, but we can arrange it so we have credible deniability.”
Stubbins grunted. Marianne thought: He’s actually going to do it.
This man was going to shoot down a Russian spaceship, despite what had to be a barrage of data coming at him from NASA, from the military, from the White House, from the UN. Maybe even from the Russian ship itself. How did Stubbins think he would get away with this? Would “credible deniability” be enough? Or was his massive narcissism so out of control that he thought nothing on Earth could stop him?
Nothing was.
Or maybe he planned on not going back to Earth afterward. If Wilshire and Judy could fly the Venture from here to World, there would be no human rivals to challenge Stubbins’s trade plans. Stubbins would arrive with only a fraction of the specialists he’d planned, but maybe he thought he could still negotiate—or wrest through terrorism—whatever he was after. The energy shield that had protected the Embassy so completely? With that, he might well be nearly invincible.
Judy said, “Jonah—I need the bathroom. Now. I really cannot wait.”
“Stay where you are!”
“All right,” she said, “but in about twenty seconds this bridge is going to stink of diarrhea and you’re going to choke on the stench. I’ll be gone maybe a minute. Nothing is going to happen in the next minute.”
Wilshire said, “Christ, Judy, we don’t even have a working bathroom.”
“There is,” she said with great and patently fraudulent patience, “a commode. Better than a pile on the bridge deck. A very loose and runny pile.”
“Oh, go!” Stubbins said. “Women!”<
br />
Marianne moved quickly from the line of sight from the bridge. She raised her loaded dart gun. If Stone accompanied Judy …
He didn’t. Judy slipped out alone and closed the bridge door behind her.
“I’m here,” Marianne said, gun raised. A sudden panic took her. What if she was wrong, if Judy hadn’t opened that one-way communications channel in order to gain Marianne’s help, if Judy was actually aiding Stubbins.…
“Oh, thank God—what is that?” Judy said.
“Tranq gun.”
“You couldn’t get real firearms?”
“No!”
“Okay,” Judy said. “What’s in the gun? How long does it take to work?”
“Ketamine. About two minutes.”
“Two minutes? That’s your plan? Those fuckers can pull out a dart in two minutes!”
“Plan? You think I’ve had time to put together a plan? Judy!”
“Okay, sorry.” She wrinkled her face into a fantastic topography of determination and fear. “We can make it work. Give me the gun. I’ll bet you’ve never fired a pistol in your life.”
True. Marianne said, “If you can hit the neck, that’s best. If—”
“No, wait,” Judy said. She darted to the bathroom and picked up a heavy wrench left by the workmen. “I’m going in first, and you fire. I’m going to hit Stone in the knees, break his kneecaps if I can. Hold the door open a tiny bit until you hear that, then rush in and fire at him first, then at Stubbins. Keep firing—do you have to reload?”
“Yes.”
Judy groaned. “Well, Stone first, then Stubbins. Eric’s a wuss. We have surprise on our side. Let’s go.”
“Judy—if we take them out—then what? The Mest’—”
“One problem at a time. Ready?”
Marianne nodded, lying. She would never be ready for this. A sense of unreality fogged her mind: I’m a geneticist, not Delta Force. Then she crowded close behind Judy to go in.
* * *
The rest of the mice wouldn’t leave their cages. Probably they were scared. Colin was. The smell of the dead bad man was making his stomach all funny, so he left the lab and walked carefully through the storage place. The two mice stirred in his pocket but they couldn’t get out.
“I’ll keep you safe,” Colin whispered to them. “We’ll find Grandma.”
The mice made mouse noises, but that didn’t help.
He opened the door to the main cabin. Grandma was by the door to the bridge, her back to him, but before Colin could say anything, she rushed through and the bridge door closed behind her.
* * *
The door was left open only the smallest bit, but Stone saw it. “Shut the door,” he said to Judy. Marianne heard them not through the door but through the open channel of the wall screen.
Judy said, “God, that hurt. My ass—hemorrhoids—”
“I said—Arrhhhh!”
Marianne flung open the door. Judy had succeeded in whacking Stone in the knees, and he’d fallen back against the bulkhead. Marianne fired. The dart hit him in the neck. His face twisted into an expression she’d never seen on a human face. He roared, yanked out the dart, and threw himself toward her. Judy whacked him on the back of the head with the wrench and he went down.
But now Stubbins was on Marianne, wrenching the dart gun from her hand. He shouted something she couldn’t hear, something was wrong with her hearing, all sound blurred into a single noisy buzz. Jonah had the gun in one hand and his other came up and backhanded her across the face.
Words emerged in her head from the general buzz: If that had been his fist, I’d be gone. But it hadn’t been his fist and although the pain was incredible, But not as bad as childbirth—what a time to think of labor now—she rolled away. Judy tried to hit Stubbins with the wrench but he batted her away. She fell to the floor and threw it at him. It hit him in the face and his bellow filled the bridge like a gale.
He picked up the wrench and advanced on Judy.
Marianne had not the slightest doubt that he would beat her to death. Stubbins had dropped the tranq gun. Marianne crawled over to it and began reloading. But there was no time, no time—
Wilshire, who’d sat frozen in his chair, came to life now that the odds were so heavily in Stubbins’s favor. He jumped up and pinned Judy to hold her against the bulkhead just to the left of the door, so that Stubbins could better attack her.
“Stop!” a little voice cried. Colin stood in the doorway. “Don’t hurt Aunt Judy!”
Stubbins turned his head briefly, saw Colin, and turned back to Judy. He raised the wrench high above his head.
Something hit him in the face, then another something.
Mice. Colin had thrown two mice at Stubbins. Where had Colin gotten … oh God.…
The soft squeaking projectiles distracted Stubbins just long enough for Marianne to stagger up and fire. The dart lodged itself in Stubbins’s neck. He groped to pull it out.
If Wilshire had still been holding Judy, Stubbins’s momentary pause wouldn’t have made any difference. But Wilshire shrieked, “Those mice are infected!” and let go of Judy. The mice, dazed, ran around on the floor. Wilshire pushed past Colin and ran off the bridge, slamming the door behind him. Judy rolled away from Stubbins.
Marianne loaded again and fired.
Stubbins pulled out the second dart and started toward Marianne. Judy leaped onto his back. She didn’t have the wrench, but she reached around his head and gouged at his eyes. He roared and reached behind him to throw her off. She didn’t let go, wildly jabbing at his eyes, and they spun in a crazy tarantella around the bridge. While they struggled, Marianne reloaded and fired her last dart. It hit Stubbins in the shoulder, easily penetrating his shirt. Judy shifted from her unsuccessful attempt to reach his eyes and instead grabbed his arms, trying to keep him from pulling out the dart. Marianne rushed over and hit Stubbins with the empty tranq pistol.
He struck out with his fist, connecting with Marianne’s left shoulder. She gasped with pain but kept hold of the pistol in her right hand, striking him with it until with a huge final roar he grabbed her arm, flung her across the room, and threw Judy off his back. He pulled out the dart.
Colin was trying to catch his mice. Before Marianne could even yell, “No, Colin—don’t touch them!” Stubbins had the boy in his arms.
There was sudden quiet on the bridge.
“Sit in that corner,” Stubbins said, “both of you, or I’ll kill him.”
Marianne cried to Judy, “Do it!”
Judy crept to the corner. Marianne followed her. Colin whimpered but didn’t cry. Marianne focused on Stubbins. His last words had slurred a little. How much of the ketamine had gotten into his bloodstream?
Individual response to tranquilizing agents may vary widely.
“You … you…,” Stubbins said.
Keep him talking. “Jonah, don’t hurt Colin. We’ll do whatever you say, go wherever you want, are you taking the Venture to World, do you know how long the voyage—” She had no idea what she was babbling, she just wanted him to respond, to do anything except hurt Colin—
“Let me go,” Colin said clearly.
Stubbins’s eyes rolled in his head. His big body slumped. Just before he fell over, Colin slipped from his arms and landed upright on the deck, as neatly as if climbing out of bed in the home he didn’t have.
With Stubbins and Stone both down, pain rushed back into Marianne. For a moment blackness took her, but she fought it off. There was no time now for shock.
“Colin, are … you … okay?”
“Yes,” he said. “Are you hurt, Grandma?”
“No,” she lied. “Judy?”
“I think my arm’s broken.”
“I’ll get first aid and—”
“No!” Judy said. “Lock the bridge door.”
“I’ll do it!” Colin said. “I know how!”
Yes, of course—Wilshire was still somewhere in the ship. Marianne did a quick body check on herself. Bruis
ed and hurting but nothing seemed broken. She said, “I have to go out there, Judy. We need rope to tie them up. I don’t know how long Stubbins will be out.”
“Don’t tie up Stone,” Judy said grimly. “He’s dead.”
That made two men they’d murdered. Marianne pushed away the thought and turned to Colin. “You sit up on that big chair, you hear me? Don’t touch anything, including the mice!” The two mice still ran frantically around the bridge, which lacked crevices to hide in. One settled for cowering under what had been Wilshire’s chair. Marianne, Judy, and Colin had all been vaccinated, the supposed “Lyme disease” vaccine—but what if the mice carried something else besides Korean hemorrhagic fever? Did Wilshire know; was that why he was so afraid?
Everything on Marianne hurt. But she picked up the wrench and cautiously opened the door. Both mice ran out. Wilshire was not in the main cabin. Marianne tore open random lockers: no first-aid kit or rope but she did find duct tape.
When she returned, locking the door behind her, Judy had dragged herself into the chair she’d occupied before—the communications chair?—her arm hanging limply by her side, her face twisted with pain. “Can you tie up Stubbins?”
“Yes.” She taped his hands together. As she started on his ankles, Stubbins twitched. Before she’d finished, his eyes opened.
They stared at each other.
Stubbins tried to buck his huge body toward her, but it was a feeble motion. Some ketamine still remained in his system. Then he started to curse, language so foul that Colin’s eyes opened wide. Marianne ripped off her shoe and then a sock and stuffed the sock into his mouth.
Judy laughed, the sound shaky but shocking. She did something else to the controls in front of her and all at once the cabin was filled with Russian voices.
“I have a channel open to the Russian ship,” Judy said unnecessarily. “Can you speak Russian?”
Marianne had only the phrases she’d learned to address a cleaning lady she and Kyle had once had: Please to clean stove today and Need more soap? She understood nothing of the sentences swirling around her. “No!” she said to Judy.
“Well, one of us better try. Look.”
Marianne glanced for the first time at the blue and green dots on the wall screen. They had moved much closer to each other.
