Firmament: Radialloy

by J. Grace Pennington

Though appearing startled, the Commander retained his hold on me, and again my arm was pulled so hard that I thought it would be pulled off.

  I screamed. “Stop! Stop!”

  XXVI

  “Two against one, Sandison!” puffed Sigmet’s voice. I couldn’t see past Peat’s giant body, but I heard boots tapping on the steps and knew that the scientist must be running up the stairs. “Give her up!”

  “Give up my daughter?” growled the Commander.

  Peat scoffed. “You’re not fooling anybody. You never wanted her.”

  “I have the legal right to her!”

  Neither of the other men apparently thought this worthy of an answer. Peat and the Commander glared into each other’s eyes for a moment, while Sigmet limped up and stood panting beside his assistant.

  There was an awful silence. Peat’s hands were still clamped on my shoulders, while the Commander held my arm in a vice-like grip. For the first time I noticed the methodical, echoey clanking from far below us. The hold was a straight drop down, I realized—with the great metal crushing bins that consolidated our recycling directly below.

  Commander Howitz let go of my arm, and at the same time drew his blaster from its holster and pointed it at Peat. “All right then.”

  Peat pulled me close to him and forced me between himself and the blaster.

  The Commander shook his head. “I’ll shoot, Mars, you know I will. She’s as good to me dead as alive.”

  The words, together with the cold, gravelly tone in which they were spoken, forced a hard, short shiver through my body, prickling my skin with goosebumps.

  “I forgot that you only play the loving father card when it suits you,” scoffed Peat, pushing me away from him. I grunted as I landed on my hands and knees, hair falling into my face. As my torn hands hit the ground, I bit my lip to keep from screaming.

  “Impasse,” Peat’s strong voice said, and I looked back at him. His own blaster pointed now at Commander Howitz. He must have drawn it as he pushed me away.

  I was free. But if I tried to move, they’d both shoot me. I had no doubt of it. My own father had said it, they didn’t need me alive.

  Crash, Crash, come on, please find me!

  “We’re wasting our time!” Peat shouted.

  “Listen, Sandison,” Sigmet said evenly. “We’re not going to get anywhere this way. We pretended to agree to a settlement before—to split the profits—why not agree to it for real? We can all get away in the speeder.”

  “I don’t trust him,” Peat protested before the Commander could answer.

  “A truce then,” Sigmet suggested. “We can at least get away from here and fight about this later. If we don’t get off soon, none of us will get the alloy.”

  I watched the Commander’s face, my heart thumping loud and fast. He considered—

  A huge red light on a control panel near us blinked on and off, and at the same time an ear-splitting beep echoed through the thruster chamber.

  “Thrusters engaging,” came a computerized voice, as the blinking and beeping continued, “in five, four, three...”

  Commander Howitz dropped to the floor. A blaster fired, and I saw a small burst of energy shoot over my head.

  “...two, one.”

  A roaring thundered above us, and the air immediately began getting hot. The floor rumbled, vibrated, and then heaved, sending Peat and Sigmet stumbling towards the panel.

  Now was my chance.

  I tried to get to my feet, but the metal walkway heaved again, throwing me chest first to the ground. I gasped as all the air shot from my lungs, but I didn’t dare wait to get my breath. Panting for air, I got to my knees and began crawling back towards the lift. If I could just get there—

  The floor lurched again as the roaring continued, and my injured hands skidded across the floor. I kept going, gasping for breath and in pain as each hand touched the hard metal. I heard yells from behind me, but didn’t dare look back.

  The air was getting hotter. Already sweat was dripping down my face and back, but I kept going.

  Another lurch hurled me against the railing, driving the vertical pole between my ribs. I cried out and tightened my muscles, gripping wildly for the railing above me.

  “Get down, you fools!” I heard someone yell.

  Another violent lurch threw my legs over the edge of the platform, and I screamed as I felt my body slide to follow it. I clawed uselessly at the floor, then grabbed for the railing.

  I found it just as my cheek slammed against the edge of the platform, and I gripped it with both bleeding hands. Gravity jerked at me, straining my already-tired shoulder joints.

  And I hung, panting.

  Everything kept on shaking. My eyes were almost on a level with the platform, but I could see Peat and Sigmet holding onto the blinking thruster panel, and the Commander crawling, stumbling towards them.

  What was he doing? Did they even notice I was gone?

  It was then that I looked up and saw an opening in the pipe. A section of it near the wall was removed, leaving a yawning gap. The malfunctioning thruster—it was being repaired.

  I felt blood ooze from my hands onto the pole, making it harder to keep my grip. I screamed as I felt one hand slip, and slid it over the rusty metal to a dryer spot.

  “Andi!”

  Where had that voice come from? And was it...

  It was Crash! From my wristcom!

  I couldn’t answer—even if my hands had been free, my com still wasn’t transmitting.

  “Andi, I tracked you on the screen. I’m coming right now to get you.”

  A computerized voice made another announcement that I could only make out part of. “Warning… online… vacate…”

  I heard the Commander scream, “You fools!”

  My hands slipped again.

  I felt almost insane with fear. The clanking blackness yawned below me like a maw, threatening to swallow me the moment I lost my grip.

  “Father!” I screamed, but he didn’t even hear me. He was still trying to make his way to the panel.

  I struggled to pull myself up, straining every muscle in my body, pulling, pulling on the bar, but I couldn’t do it.

  My wristcom beeped again. “Andi, I’m almost there!” Crash again. He was coming. He would save me, and everything would be all right. Everything would be fine.

  “Andi,” came a deeper voice. One I recognized. Guilders. “Let go. Let go, now.”

  I froze, and time froze with me, as my mind screamed in terror. Let go? What was he saying? Was he insane? I’d be crushed—killed! Crash would be here soon—

  Let go.

  If I’d let go of my doubt and trusted the Doctor days ago, none of this would have happened.

  If I’d trusted God with my life, if I’d let it go, the Doctor would still be sane.

  The Doctor had never failed me. Neither had God.

  Neither had Guilders.

  A louder rumbling opened up above my head, and I heard a clanking, drowning out that from below. The three men struggled over the platform, screaming things I couldn’t hear.

  Closing my eyes tight, I let go.

  I plummeted, and a single second after the metal had slipped from my fingers, a fountain of flames shot over the platform out of the opening of the pipe. Simultaneously, a metal casing clanked down and fitted over the platform where I had hung just a moment before, shutting off the flames, and three distinct screams of agony followed me as I tumbled down into the blackness.

  I didn’t have time to scream or cry, or even think. I was falling—soon I’d be crushed in the giant recycling bins.

  But for now—for this one second—I was free. I was flying.

  My heart cried, tears I couldn’t associate with either joy or sorrow. It just cried.

  And then for an instant I saw the provision shelves ahead of me, far away, and before I could think, I landed—landed in something soft and downy, something that cradled me as I sank into it, gently supporting me and cushioning my
slow descent.

  Then I stopped.

  For an instant, I wondered if I’d died, and was lying on the floor of Heaven. Blackness loomed above me. I was shaken, and my neck hurt a little, but that was all, and I could see whiteness in my peripheral vision.

  My father was dead.

  The Doctor was insane.

  My heart ached at both thoughts and yet—I rested. I could rest now.

  Peace flooded me.

  “Andi!”

  Before I could react, a pair of arms had scooped me up, and I was pressed to a rough jacket. I could hear a warm heart beating beneath my ear, and the arms held me as if they’d never let me go.

  “Dad?” I gasped. “Doctor?”

  It couldn’t be his voice. He was dead—he had to be.

  “You’re safe,” he whispered, and his hands stroked my hair.

  “Is she all right, Gerry?”

  My heart still wasn’t allowing me to believe that it was him. I pulled away from the arms, and looked up into the face that belonged to the heart.

  It was his face. Tired, but intelligent, sane. Smiling. Love shining from the gray eyes, face and hands dry once again. “Are you all right?”

  I touched his cheek with my forefinger. “You—you were insane. It was too late.”

  “No,” he said softly, taking my hand. “He lied, to speed things up.”

  Then I understood. We’d had more than twenty hours all along.

  “Did it work, Doctor Lloyd?” I heard August’s voice ask pantingly. “Is she all right?”

  The softness. They’d put something in the bin to break my fall, and left Guilders, the only one with a working wristcom, to tell me what to do.

  If I hadn’t let go, I’d be dead.

  A sob escaped me, and I buried my face in the Doctor’s jacket.

  He kept on stroking my hair, letting me weep against the rough, comfortable fabric of his uniform.

  XXVII

  My memories of what happened after that are fuzzy. I remember waking up on a cot in sickbay, with the nice, familiar, humming of a monitor beside me.

  At first I didn’t move, then I heard a voice speaking nearby. My ears were still having trouble functioning, but I strained them to hear.

  “...a couple of ccs should do it. You’ll need some rest, my boy.” The most beloved voice in my world.

  “Doctor?” I called, starting to raise myself on one elbow.

  “Give him the shots for me,” I heard him say, then he hastened to my side. I let myself drop back onto the cot, and stared into his face, still not taking in the fact that he was alive and well.

  He smiled at me for a moment, his hands in the pockets of his white coat, then he leaned down and kissed me gently on the forehead. “How are you doing?”

  I inhaled deeply. “I’m okay. I’m a little sore.”

  Pulling my hands up to look at them, I saw that they were nearly healed. There was just some clear dressing wrapped around them to hold everything in place, while the regeneration continued to take effect. “What happened? How did you...” I couldn’t figure out how to ask it.

  With a slight sigh, he sat on the edge of my cot. “I don’t remember much of what happened in the past few days. Trent and Guilders filled me in some. Apparently while Guilders was trying to find you, Ralston and Lieutenant How—August—managed to override the security in Howitz’s door. He’d rigged it with an alarm, but he couldn’t hear it in the thrusters.”

  So that was how he’d figured out where I was, when I tried my mother’s name in his cabin lock.

  “And... you know who he is? You know about August and—the radialloy?”

  “Trent told me.” He laid his hand over mine. “I’m so sorry you had to go through all that without me.” There was silence for a minute, then he said, more gruffly, “If I wasn’t such a grumpy old man, I’d say I was proud of you.”

  I smiled. “You’re not a grumpy old man, Dad.”

  “Then I suppose I will say it.”

  I reached up and put my arms around his neck. He hugged me back, and we stayed like that for a long time.

  Finally he laid me back down. “It’s over now. They all died in the accident—one of them bumped the thruster controls and turned it back on while the something-or-other was open.”

  I sighed. I should have been glad he was gone, glad that I’d never hear that gravelly voice again, but I felt strangely heavy. “Dad... you know who my mother was?”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I found the picture in your jacket pocket. Lavinia.”

  “She was your sister’s best friend, wasn’t she? Crash’s mother and my mother. That’s why Crash thought he recognized August. He’d known the family when he was little.”

  The Doctor nodded. “She was a beautiful woman. A brave woman. Like you, Andi.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. I swallowed, and remembered something. “And... Doctor Holmes?”

  “I have to assume that...” he stopped.

  “My father killed him.”

  He nodded again. “He must have tracked you to Emmett somehow, and used that—that memory machine to get him to tell that we were in space.”

  And he’d left Doctor Holmes to die. I shuddered, and the Doctor held my hand more tightly.

  One thing still did not make sense to me. “Dad?”

  He looked at me.

  “That day—when Crash left. When it all started... you said that you needed to test me for something, but you never did it.”

  I let my question go unspoken.

  He sighed, and winced as if it hurt to remember. “Your father had come into my room the night before, carrying a box with him. I know now that that must have been when he...”

  I closed my eyes and nodded.

  The Doctor cleared his throat and went on. “At the time though, he said that it was something he needed to implement into sickbay for engineering. He tried to act like it was only a business visit—but I sensed some kind of... resentment.”

  I knew what he meant, and wondered now if that hidden anger was what had always made me uncomfortable around him.

  “Anyway, he made some remark about you not being able to go down into engineering. It was offhand, and I can’t even remember exactly what he said, but his tone—his attitude—it was like he was probing. I didn’t like it, especially with what had happened to your knee earlier, so—I decided I had to figure out once and for all what that metal was.” He paused for awhile. “I guess we know now what it was.”

  Nodding, I could only say, “I guess we do.”

  In the silence that followed, I remembered my brother. “Where’s August?” I asked. “Is he okay?”

  “He’ll be all right. Blood pressure has come back to a safe level, but we’re going to have to do something to help him if he’s going to be working here in this stress factory. Incorporate more sodium into his diet, lay off the carbohydrates, you know how it goes.”

  I understood all this about blood pressure and sodium, but that wasn’t what I was asking. “I know, Dad, but—how is he?”

  The Doctor turned to look over his shoulder at the cot where August lay, then turned back to me with a helpless expression. “If you’re feeling all right, I think you should go talk to him.”

  I knew that expression. He might be able to diagnose heart disease, set broken arms and cure dyspepsia, but when it came to comforting people, he was lost. Somehow he never knew what to say. And while his gruff bedside manner could serve to inspire a mysterious confidence in the sick in body, it did nothing for the sick at heart. And I was sure that was what August must be.

  The Doctor rose, and I sat up slowly. Finding that I could move all right, I stood, and made my way to the cot where my brother lay.

  He lay motionless, staring at the bleak, white ceiling without expression. His hands were folded over his chest, and the color hadn’t come back into his face.

  I knelt beside him. “Are you feeling better?”

  He didn
’t answer, or even indicate that he’d heard me.

  I lay my hand over his. “August, I’m sorry...”

  He turned slowly to face me. “Your Book is right, Andi.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That conventional Book of yours.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t really...”

  “I know what I said. But since he died... things are different. To you, he was just a cruel, heartless man, and he was all that, but—he was still my dad. I remember him teaching me things, helping me, picking me up when I fell, as a little boy. Underneath it all—I don’t know. He was always still that man to me.”

  “But... what does that have to do with my book?” A tear rolled down my face, and I squeezed his hand.

  “Your Book says that ‘the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.’ Dad didn’t have that gift. I know he didn’t.”

  “And do you?”

  “Maybe. But he’s the one that’s dead. He’s the one that’s gone, not me. Why would God take him before he was ready, Andi?” Moisture stood in his brown eyes as he looked into mine.

  I knew I had no answer to that question. But now, I knew I didn’t need one. Because it didn’t matter anymore.

  “August—I don’t know. I know this won’t sound helpful, but—you just have to trust. To trust that—‘all things work together for good to them that love God.’ He’s never failed me, August. He won’t fail you.”

  “But what if I don’t love Him?”

  “Then you’d better start,” I said, laying my other hand over his. “You didn’t die, August. You didn’t lose your life. You have me, and you have a new life ahead of you.”

  He was silent, and his face didn’t change. I didn’t know if he was taking my words to heart or not, but there was one more thing I had to say. “And... you want to know one good thing I see from this? Your change of heart. God is calling to you, August. Whether you like it or not, He’s calling to you.”

  Brushing my hand over his, I stood up and turned away from him. Maybe my words had helped him, maybe not. I longed for him to have the peace I felt, but I was sure that my words were true, and I trusted God to do the rest.