by Louise Wise
Bodie lunged at him, grabbing him by the front of his suit. But he was too full of despair to do anything other than glare at the other man.
Matt seemed to realize this, and stared challengingly. “Yeah?” he said. “Who’d you think would win, old man?”
Bodie’s cheek twitched and he hurled Matt away as far as he could in the zero gravity conditions of Taurus.
Matt spun backwards, grabbing at handrails to halt his motion. When he had steadied himself he said, “That was assault. Pity I’ve no witnesses, but you left her behind, didn’t you?”
Bodie buckled himself into his seat. “Callous bastard.”
“There’s nothing callous about being realistic. You can’t risk lives for a body. “
Bodie continued to glare with sour eyes. He re-adjusted the dials. “Jen always said you became insanely jealous of her when you found out Zack was her father. I think “threatened” is a better word. Am I right? Did you feel threatened by her status?”
Matt was deeply flushed, but Bodie couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or anger. He swiveled forward in his chair and faced the monitor with his face set in an angle of tautness. “Well, what d’you know! I’m right!” Bodie chuckled humorlessly as he flipped the switch. “Secure yourself,” he said. “We could be in for a bumpy ride.”
Matt looked shocked. “You’re not going down? Logan -”
“As far as Logan and base control are aware an asteroid has just hit us for the first time. Losing Jenny, the alien and wolves, hasn’t happened yet. So, we’re going down.” He moved switches and Taurus’s engines began to hum. “Kate,” he said. “Tell me the location of the asteroids. “
“I can’t locate Jennifer, James,” she said.
“Now she tells us,” Bodie muttered. “The location?” he asked again in a louder, angry voice.
“I feel I am offline, James. I cannot give you that information, and I am going to close myself down while I do a self-repair check. My override is still unable to function. Please wait until I am hunky dory.”
Nobody laughed this time.
“Kate -” Bodie began, but the illuminated screen of Kate went blank.
Matt sniggered. “I guess that’s it then. You won’t do it without her - no balls.”
Bodie snapped his head away from the screen, “Watch me!” He adjusted a dial, then reached up and pulled a cable, and Taurus began her descent towards Eden.
Jenny stared at the body on the ground. Fly hadn’t entered this far into the spaceship for such a long time he’d probably forgotten the corpse existed.
She had hated the sight (and smell) of the decomposing body, and wanted it removed from her regular path. If the ship was going to be her new home until rescue she wanted it liveable. With her nose and mouth tightly bound, she took a secure hold of the ankles. The body was heavy, probably heavier in death. She tugged relentlessly, but the huge corpse refused to budge.
Out of frustration she shoved the legs over, and the body twisted from its own weight, and fell onto its side. A fresh odor of wasting flesh filled her nose, and she turned away gagging, but not before noticing something attached to the alien’s decaying left arm. Controlling her disgust, she stooped to take a closer look. Her heart quickened. It looked like a gun of some description.
TWELVE
She sat nervously in front of a spitting fire, waiting for Fly to return from the day’s hunt. Her head flew upwards at the sound of rustling undergrowth, but it was only a small animal searching for bedding for its nest.
She lowered her head again and stared into the fire. She wanted her freedom back. The threat of rape, even if it was all in her mind, was still the main factor in their strange relationship and she wanted to put an end to it. The Itor gun could provide her with enough conviction to step out on her own.
Fly shared so little of himself but was a huge threat to her self-preservation and she knew the only way to survive was to get out.
He appeared, without sound, with a dripping dismembered carcass. She started, his appearance taking her from her troubled thoughts. He dropped the animal next to the fire, and found a spot beside the old, fire-blackened tree and sat down. He closed his eyes.
She regarded him thoughtfully, trying to find a way inside his head.
“You’re tired,” she said. “Looking after two people, instead of one, is a drain on you.”
His head jerked up. He opened his eyes, and fastened his strange black stare on her face.
She cleared her throat, continuing when he failed to answer. “I’m beginning to believe you’re right, and I shan’t be rescued now. I w-want you to know I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me, but I think it’s time I started to fend for myself.”
With no time to move, or even scream, he pulled out his knife and threw it towards her. The knife handle quivered when the blade became imprisoned in the hard ground close to her feet.
She swallowed heavily and looked up. His mouth widened, and split into a broad grin.
“It is easier to begin skinning from the belly,” he said, and her whole posture relaxed when his meaning became clear.
She looked at the carcass. “Nobody eats meat back home anymore,” she said. “Everything is processed and man-made. But if I had to hunt for food, I’m sure I could manage.” She looked at the knife, and began to reach for it.
But he moved forwards before her hand was even close, and placed it firmly back in his thigh belt.
Jenny watched the action worriedly. If he couldn’t trust her with a knife, how would he react when he knew she had a fiercer weapon all of her own? Jenny became more nervous, and the gun hot, as it dawned on her Fly would obviously regard the weapon as a threat on his life.
“I’m trying to tell you you needn’t hunt for me anymore. Do you understand?” She spoke with deliberate slowness, wishing he’d use his translator. But instead he continued to regard her in silence.
“I’m freeing you from me,” she poked herself in the chest. “You won’t want to bother yourself with me once you’ve your new shelter, and I don’t want to become a burden.”
At last, he fumbled in his pocket for the small computer. He pressed several buttons, and then looked up at her.
“Burden,” he said, and repeated the word in his alien tongue. “If you were a burden I would have ended your life a long time ago.”
Jenny refused to feel frightened. She was tired of fear. “I don’t think you’re as bad as you paint yourself,” she said, half to herself.
Fly looked confused as he studied the small screen in his hands. “Paint?”
Jenny smiled and scrambled up to sit on her knees. “I thank you for what you’ve done for me, but I don’t need it anymore. I want to fend for myself. “
This he understood. “You are leaving my ship?”
“Er, no. I’d like to stay, if y-you don’t mind. I mean, you are making yourself a new shelter, aren’t you? What I mean is,” she gave a small laugh, as if to say, oh little old me, no threat to anyone, “I’ve found a way to defend myself from predators. “
Fly shook the little machine in his hands. “You speak too fast,” he said. He banged the device on the ground. “Computer failing.”
“I’ve a found a way to defend myself,” she tried again. “I do not need you anymore.”
He sat forward, silent, his eyes burning holes into her. The little computer, forgotten, in his hands.
She swallowed, knowing she had just made a grave mistake, but unable to back down now. “There should be no suspicion from either of us,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “We both have different, er, abilities to offer the other, and if I can be of any help than you only need ask. “
“I am aware of the ability you can offer me.”
Jenny felt her face burn at his obvious implication, and fought to ignore it. “I’m trying to tell you you needn’t stay for my benefit.”
He leaned back against the trunk. The few branches left were like black claws reaching for the
sky. He drew up his knees and rested his large arms on them, then fixed his steady gaze on her face in an unmoving stare.
“Do humans not possess humor in their long list of emotions?”
Jenny looked at him aghast. “I’m sorry, I’m making a mess of this, aren’t I?”
He cut off her stuttering apology. “Fetch the iron spit, and I will prepare the meat. We can talk after we have eaten.”
She jumped up quickly, eager to be relieved of his obvious scorn. Unfortunately, her fast movement unsettled the gun resting between the elastic of her long-johns and midriff and it began to slip down her leg. Jenny could feel it falling, and tried to turn away to hide the lump from him.
“What is that inside your clothes?”
She crossed a leg over the other, and stood balancing on one foot. “Oh, nothing.” She attempted a cheerful smile in his direction. “Just something that’s slipped down.”
“I want to see.”
She faced him miserably, knowing how it would be perceived, and placed both feet on the floor. The gun fell out instantly, and lay between her feet.
“This is what I was trying to tell -” she got no further, because he lurched to his feet with sporadic outbursts in his alien tongue. She held up her hands in self-defense, and backed several paces without any conscious effort of her own.
Fly grasped her vest and slammed her against the wall of the ship. “Is this what you mean by “defending yourself from predators”? What were you going to do? Kill me when my back was turned?”
“Y-you understood?” Her voice was strained for her breath had been knocked out of her, and her vest was bunched up so tightly beneath her chin she doubted she could explain further even if she knew how.
“I understood.” He tightened his hold against her struggles, and pushed up her face with his fist, still clenched around her crumpled vest. “I had hoped I could trust you; hoped we could banish this fear you have of me.”
“Fly…” she rasped.
She was released. But her fear changed to panic when she realized her breasts was exposed to his eyes. She moved to pull her clothes back into place, but the heat in him had changed from white anger, to red lust. A low sound escaped from his throat, it sounded like a long-suffering groan.
Abruptly his hand clamped onto one breast, and his other hand seized the back of her skull to hold her still while he tasted the interior of her mouth. Then his lust exploded and he dragged her down to the ground without any effort at all. Her long-johns were off before she had time to register he had hold of them.
She noticed his clawed hand hovering somewhere above and as it came towards her she could imagine the claws slicing through her chest wall, cutting her open and spilling her pulsing organs in one agonizing slash. But the claws never touched her; the only purpose had been to remove the rest of her clothes.
She felt a rough hand force her thighs apart, and then hard, bruising fingers inside her.
“No!” she shouted. “You can’t do this to me…” She began to scream; it was pointless but it was a reaction born to thousands under dire stress.
He placed a callused palm over her face, silencing her and holding her still at the same time. He began to loosen his trousers. Jenny seized her chance while he held her one-handed and, using her body weight, she was able to dislodge his hold and roll away.
She had only taken a couple of paces when his fingers tightened around her ankle. She fell heavily, sobbing at her own lack of strength; but an inch from her fingertips lay the small cylinder-shaped gun.
She grasped it in triumph, and flipped over onto her back, placing the thin point straight between his eyes.
Fly released her foot and sat back on his heels.
Despite her bitter anger, tears filled her eyes. “Regardless of what you believe, I don’t have the desire to kill anyone or anything. “
“Everyone has that desire. It is called survival.”
A single tear over-spilled and rolled down to the corner of her mouth.
“I won’t let you rape me.” She moved backwards on her bottom, unconscious that she was naked.
She strengthened her hold on the gun. A strap hung from it, which Jenny believed to be a thigh strap. The trigger seemed to be a finger-sized oval of concave glass, and beneath the glass was a tiny nib, similar to that of a felt-tip pen. The other end tapered to a near perfect point, and at the slightest touch of her finger on the indented glass trigger produced a beam of light that shot outward, illuminating the target.
And she pointed it straight at Fly’s head.
She was aware of his quiet control and knew he could kill her without moving from the position he held now. Her hands, clammy with nervous energy, steadied the gun, and a ray of light flared out and lit up his face.
Then he fell on her, grasping her wrist and pinning it down. His other hand snatched the gun and flung it to one side.
Jenny howled in frustration.
But Fly stepped away, and without a word, he flung her clothes at her. She clutched them to her body, her heart thudding wildly. She looked up, her eyes awash with tears and confusion.
“Why don’t you rape me and get it over with,” she cried. “I can’t live like this! I can’t live in the shadow of rape and death. Rape me, but kill me afterwards. Go on!” she snarled at him, realizing she was becoming hysterical.
“You held the gun the wrong way. You were about to kill yourself. “
Her eyes rounded in shock.
“You are wrong, you do need me.” He crossed over towards the gun, and bent to retrieve it. He held it out to her. “I will teach you how to use it.”
Jenny’s mouth opened and then closed again. She looked up from the gun he’d put in her hand, and was even more astonished to see a look of pure shame cross his face.
“I apologize, Jenny, this will not happen again.” He walked away leaving her feeling mystified yet somehow pitying him.
Fly placed a larger melon on the ground, and took his place behind her. He stooped so he could see what she was seeing at her level.
“Again,” he said. “Steady your eye.”
Jenny held her breath as she tried to control herself, but again her eye quivered before she was ready, and the invisible force whizzed straight passed the melon, and disappeared into the bush behind.
She took off the gun and knuckled her watering eyes. They ached so much she almost wished she’d never found the blasted weapon. But she had found it, and had been using it incorrectly, and she was overwhelmingly thankful she hadn’t explored the device in greater detail.
The strap was for the head; the concave glass was placed over the eye like a contact lens, and the beam was directed into the eyeball; and that was her problem. The natural water in her eyes fought to flush out the lens, and the water itself was confusing the gun and sent out invisible rays to disintegrate anything in her immediate line of vision.
But the gun in itself was brilliant. There were no dark corners, or total blackness, and its magic eye could see everything, it could even distinguish between camouflaging colors.
She replaced the gun over her head and, almost immediately, the miniature nib moved under her direction. Finally, with growing excitement, she hit her first melon. It was sent flying backward to lay pulverized on the scorched ground.
She looked across at Fly in triumph, hoping to find something of what she was feeling mirror in his own expression. But his face was the usual blank mask, and her delighted smile wavered.
He placed a smaller melon on the ground, and Jenny watched him from the eyepiece. His body’s hues filled the tiny screen in her eye with a deep, dense color.
Now! Shoot him! Breath filled her body, and her face swelled with heat. The flat dense color walked towards her; it stopped a short distance away. The bottom half of it moved, and out of her other eye she saw his mouth open as he spoke:
“I am faster.”
Jenny’s mouth thinned.
“Let’s see, shall we?” she said, and saw
wariness cross his face. His second emotion in one day, she mused to herself. “Line up another next to mine, and after a count of three we’ll both shoot our chosen fruit.”
She watched him closely and thought she saw relief appear on his face, but it was gone so quickly Jenny wondered if she was mistaken.
He stood looking at her for what seemed a long time before he crossed to the pile of melons and placed another next to hers.
“OK?” she asked when he stood next to her. “After three… one, two, three -”
Before she could register what had happened, Jenny had fired and blasted an already blackened melon. Fly had shot his venom at both fruits in the time it took her to blink.
She pulled off the gun, and looked around at him.
“That was a warning,” he said, his face like stone.
Jenny paused, then said, “It’s called showing off where I come from. “
Fly’s mask broke, and he grinned abashed.
Jenny jerked her head away, realizing she was staring.
She rubbed her aching eye unconsciously, feeling she’d conquered something. Then slowly, she returned his grin.
THIRTEEN
Now she had the gun as a companion, Jenny felt it was safe to take a walk on her own. With time to and actually study her surroundings, she was immediately astonished by how much everything had changed.
While she had been panicking and fighting for her survival, the seasons had secretly gone about their own busy work and radically transformed the landscape.
When she had first stepped out of Taurus XI the bush and shrubs were a mass of brown twigs; but now, on the eve of summer, small brightly colored buds had formed. Trees that were bare before were covered in small blossoms that, from a distance, looked like snow. Jenny stopped and looked round. It was so beautiful! Hardly the same planet at all. Her feet sank into the once frozen ground, which was now covered in a light spongy grass.
Solitary knee-high blooms had opened their petals to the sun in wonderful colors and bathed the surrounding area in a glorious scent. Breathing deeply, she removed the gun and looked around.
