by James Palmer
McCoy nodded. “I wonder why we’re just encountering them now.”
“Perhaps they were attracted to the ship when it appeared, and had time to reach it since it has lingered here.”
“I don’t want to take any of them back with us,” said McCoy. “Come on. We’re ready for him now.”
They walked side by side now, helmet lights scanning every turn and bend and opening large enough to conceal any would be attacker. Except for a quick thudding as of scurrying feet, they saw no sign of the creature following its attack on Betty-12.
“I think it attacked out of fear,” said the android.
“Let’s be careful, though.”
“Agreed.”
They traveled another hundred yards when all hell broke loose.
*
The inky black, comet-strewn vacuum outside the Black Hole’s viewport was alive with blaster fire.
The pirates, oddly enough, were the ones with the weakest stomachs for fighting. They had the numbers but were unable to form a cohesive attack formation, and had to dodge not only the Space Patrol, the Navy and the Orgum-Ree, but also each other in their mad attempts to obtain the ultimate prize: the Star Lance. One ship skipped back to Brigand when both the Navy and Orgum-Ree ships fired on it. Another tried to make a break for the comet field and the treasure it contained, but were pushed back by the Patrol’s quick cordon of the area. No one dared skipping through null space to the Star Lance’s coordinates. Skipping into an comet-riddled Oort cloud wasn’t a good idea under any circumstances.
“Someone get me McCoy!” Verne snapped.
“He isn’t answering!” someone called back in the crowded command center. Verne took a deep breath, his eyes glued to the viewport and the frightening scene unfolding there. He hoped McCoy was all right.
*
Again, the thing attacked.
It lunged from the shadows, hitting the android copilot and knocking her blaster from her hand to skitter across the deck.
McCoy aimed at the darkness and fired, the yellow energy blast piercing the gloom as it lanced down the hallway to strike a ruined bulkhead a hundred feet in front of them. Again they heard that terrible screeching as McCoy knelt to help his copilot to her feet.
“Thank you,” she said tersely.
McCoy retrieved her blaster from where it fell and handed it to her. She checked its charge and moved forward. Her suit was slashed along her right shoulder, but she was otherwise unharmed.
“I think it is playing with us,” she said. “As an animal plays with its food.”
“We’re not on the menu,” said McCoy.
“According to the ship’s diagram, there are several rooms running off this corridor,” said Betty-12. “Crew quarters. Plenty of places to hide.”
“Roger that.”
McCoy aimed his blaster into every room they came upon, his suit lights picking out overturned bunks, mangled storage lockers, and more suited bodies, but no creature.
Betty-12 did the same, covering the left side of the hallway. Neither found any signs of the creature.
“Whatever it is,” said McCoy, “it’s shy.”
Betty-12 nodded, leveling her blaster on an overturned locker that looked big enough to conceal what attacked them. Again, nothing.
McCoy kicked absently at a white space helmet, which rolled and spun around. The human owner’s mummified head was still inside.
McCoy gritted his teeth. “What in the worlds happened here?”
Betty-12 glanced at the helmet and the decapitated head inside. “We are close to the engine room.”
McCoy nodded, consciously stepping around the helmet.
Then they saw what Captain Bryson had muttered about in his logs. Lines drawn on the walls, and the floor. They looked like circuit diagrams, and glowed faintly in the gloom. Red emergency lights flared.
“We’re getting close,” said McCoy. “In an emergency, most of the power on a Navy vessel gets diverted to where it’s needed most. Life support and engineering.”
“I believe these drawings are actual circuits,” said Betty-12. “They’re tied into the ship’s power. The captain said they were drawn in metallic ink.”
“They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” said McCoy. “Alien?”
“Perhaps.”
Blasters held high, Mars McCoy and Betty-12 crept closer to the entrance to the engine room, a wide, triangular opening that glowed faintly from within. Their ears were filled with the rhythmic thrumming of the ship’s thrusters, the hum of the engines, louder here than in any other part of the ship. Cautiously they entered the engine room, and discovered a world alive with green fire.
The entire engineering section was alive with a weird green light that glowed sickly, emanating from some far corner behind a wall of equipment. Everywhere they could see the circuit diagrams scrawled on the walls, connecting to each other and looping back in on themselves in a strange tapestry of madness.
“The light is a force field,” said Betty-12.
“For the singularity,” said McCoy.
Betty-12 nodded.
“Twenty-seven years ago the Galactic Navy created a microscopic black hole. We need to shut it down.”
A large shadow crossed their path and something black lashed out, knocking them both to the decking.
McCoy heard the outer lining of his suit tearing and reached up with his free hand, clutching his chest. The front of his protective suit fell away in tatters.
“Betty.”
“I am all right.”
McCoy got to his feet and helped Betty-12 to hers. Her suit was slashed as well, and McCoy could see shimmering circuitry beneath.
“You’re not.”
“A flesh wound,” said Betty-12. “Look out!”
A sledge hammer with claws hit McCoy squarely in the back, sending him flying. He hit the engine room floor, and his helmet slammed against the metal, causing a hairline crack to open near the neck coupling. Behind him he heard the same high-pitched screech they had heard earlier.
McCoy flipped around and for the first time got a clear view of the horror that attacked them in the corridor.
The thing was a shifting, shapeless mass. A long, eyeless head jutted from the center, white needle teeth flashing, while long arms ending in talons reached out for them before dissolving back into the mass. It was like a living tar pool, a seething pit of malevolence.
McCoy fumbled for his blaster, which he dropped when he hit the floor. He fired at the creature as it lashed out at Betty-12, hitting the dark mass dead center.
The creature let out another high-pitched screech and flowed backward, but its molecules held together. The blaster’s typical disintegrating effect did nothing to the monster.
Betty-12 leveled her blaster at the creature and fired, the searing beam hitting it on the bullet-shaped head. Again it cried out, again it poured backward, but its molecules held together.
“Our weapons are useless,” said Betty-12.
“I wouldn’t say useless,” said McCoy, standing. “They obviously hurt it. They just can’t kill it.”
The thing raged as it tumbled over some equipment, its mass flowing in between some metal duct work. A sickening, burning smell came to McCoy through the crack in his helmet.
“We need to shut down the singularity,” said Betty-12.
“Right.” McCoy had almost forgotten what they came here to do, he was so transfixed with the creature. Where did it come from? What planet’s evolution gave rise to such a monster? But he had no time for such thoughts now.
Betty-12 skirted around the creature, which struggled to reform its head and talons. McCoy did the same, using the tangled maze of duct work and equipment as a barrier between him and the creature. He never took his eyes off of it.
The creature coalesced into a more solid form and stepped from the maze of duct work. It had taken the form of a large humanoid, the insignia of a Space Ranger clearly etched into its shiny black body.
/> “It’s a chameleon,” said McCoy, firing again.
The thing was ready. The center of its body recoiled from the beam, making a perfectly round hole for the blaster beam to pass through harmlessly. This is why nobody could kill it, thought McCoy.
“If you’ve got any ideas,” he said to Betty-12, “now would be a good time to share them.”
“Let’s ask him.”
McCoy looked toward the greenish light of the containment field. Inside it was a long cylindrical shaft that came to a point halfway to the floor. Another shaft rose up to meet it, coming to a point less than an inch from the top shaft. Somewhere between the two points was a microscopic, invisible black hole.
But even more wondrous than the ship’s power source was what looked back at them through the containment field.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor was a dead man.
It wore a rotting Galactic Navy uniform. The leathery skin of its face stretched taught over angular cheekbones, its eyes now dried orbs that stared at them sightlessly. The shrunken lips were peeled back from too-white teeth that glowed green in the ghostly light of the force field.
McCoy had seen plenty of dead men, especially on this trip, but there was something very different about this one. It was breathing.
They watched as the chest expanded and contracted slowly, as if air were being forced in artificially rather than being drawn in by the lungs. Something rattled in the chest. McCoy noticed the insignia and epaulets of a Navy science officer.
Then the head moved, and the dead orbs that were once eyes appeared to stared at them.
“Did you enjoy playing with our pet?” it said, its voice raspy, like dry leaves blown by an autumn wind.
“Pet?” said McCoy, turning to the creature, which stood two feet away, looking at them with its night black ersatz face. “That thing is your pet?”
Something like an insane approximation of a laugh issued from somewhere deep inside the corpse. “Pet is one of your terms. To us it is more of a servant. A servant who likes playing with its food too much.”
“Who are you?”
“We are the Ch’Thoon,” answered the corpse. “We are using this body to communicate with you in your primitive language. Your pathetic universal translator cannot parse the True Tongue.”
“The Navy reverse engineered your technology.”
The corpse nodded. Then it looked back at them. “Yes. For amoebae, you are very clever.”
While McCoy interrogated the talking corpse, Betty-12 figured out the containment field controls. A warning claxon sounded as the containment field winked out of existence.
McCoy drew his blaster, leveling it at the mummified head of the corpse. “What are you doing aboard this ship?”
“This is our ship. It was built using our technology. We did not die out as your Navy believed. By activating this ship’s drive, they unknowingly opened the door for our return.”
“Return?” asked Betty-12. “Return from where?”
“The Outer Dark. Our planet died. We did not. Climate changed. Temperature increased. Oceans rose against us. Ice encroached. We left our bodies behind.”
“They transcended their corporeal bodies,” said Betty-12. “Amazing. They are possibly more advanced than the Faash’Tan.”
Tracer’s corpse erupted in that cruel mockery of laughter again. “We learned of the Faash’Tan from your minds, your records. We are as far beyond them as they are beyond you; as you are beyond your home world’s primates.”
“If you’re so smart,” said McCoy, “You’d know better than to insult the intelligence of someone aiming a blaster at your head.”
“You cannot kill what is already dead, Spacer.”
McCoy decided to test that theory. He fired. The destructive beam angled away from Tracer’s head inches from it, heading instead into the space above the corpse’s head, where the beam spiraled briefly before disappearing into thin air.
McCoy released the trigger.
“The singularity,” said Betty-12, and McCoy realized the tiny black hole that powered the Star Lance sucked in the blaster beam. They wouldn’t be destroying the alien-possessed corpse with their blasters. He had to try something else.
“Foolish creatures and your useless weapons,” the corpse breathed. “Man will be the first to fall when we return.”
“You’ve been flicking in and out of normal space for almost thirty of our years.” said McCoy. “If you could invade us, you would have done it already.”
The corpse stretched the thin skin of its face into a ghastly parody of a smile. “Quite true. For primitives, your species has proven resilient and unpredictable.”
“The crew wouldn’t help them,” said Betty-12. “Not at first.”
“Not without assurances,” the corpse breathed. “In the beginning, their only thought was to return to normal space. But we needed a few things before we were ready.”
“Those strange artifacts in the hold,” said Betty-12.
“Yes. Artifacts left by us when we still traveled the stars as you do. Weapons we will use to destroy your childish Empire.”
“Did you kill Tracer?” McCoy asked.
The corpse nodded its head slightly. “An accidental byproduct of merging our superior minds with his primitive one. He wanted ultimate knowledge. We gave it to him. At a cost.”
“Some trade,” McCoy glanced at Betty-12, who was transfixed on the space where the singularity sat invisibly belching X-rays and Hawking radiation and the Emperor alone knew what else.
“Can we shut it down?”
Betty-12 looked at McCoy. “Unknown. The Empire of Man has nothing like this. It is completely beyond our science.”
“And your understanding, android,” said Tracer’s corpse. “We are the Ch’Thoon. And we will use this ship to return to normal space and inhabit your primitive human shells. We will rule the galaxy forevermore.”
“You're doing a bang-up job so far,” said McCoy.
“As we said,” the corpse replied, a trace of annoyance in its unearthly voice. “We had difficulties. The void being we summoned to bring us bodies fell out of our control. It killed everyone aboard. And everyone who came after.”
McCoy glanced behind them to the night-black monstrosity in its human shape, which glared at them.
The corpse laughed its dry laughter. “Who are you to order us? We are the Ch’Thoon. We roamed the galaxy before your kind discovered fire. Your precious Emperor will house our minds, and we’ll rule with his hands.”
Betty-12 went over the control consoles near the singularity, calling up engine specs and working on shutting down the Star Lance’s strange power source.
“The skip drive is stuck in the on position,” she said, hitting buttons and flipping levers.
“The power source cannot be shut down, android,” said the corpse. “We control it. We are its masters. Not you.”
“We can change that,” said McCoy, growing annoyed with the aliens’ arrogance. He holstered his blaster and turned to help his copilot, wishing he hadn’t snoozed his way through black hole physics at the Academy.
“What are we looking at here?”
“These are the controls that generated the black hole initially,” said Betty-12. “I’m sure of it. It also gives it enough matter and energy to keep it from evaporating, while keeping it microscopically small so it doesn’t suck the entire ship into it.”
“That’s a good thing. What else?”
“When we shut down the force field, we also shut down the containment field that keeps the black hole in place. It could fall into the ship and destroy it.”
“And get bigger from all the matter it would consume,” added McCoy.
Betty-12 nodded. “These controls are fused. We can’t shut it down.”
McCoy nodded. “We’ll see about that.”
McCoy looked around the engine room. Then he saw what he was looking for on the far wall. Pulling his blaster, McCoy walked over to a set of glowing l
ines scrawled into the metal engine room bulkhead.
“What are you doing?” demanded the corpse as it tried without success to stand up.
“Forget it,” Ch-Thoon,” said McCoy. “Your host has been dead too long.”
The ink black thing the Ch’Thoon referred to as their pet sprang into terrible action, growing taller and broader and sticking foot-long spikes out of its body as it advanced on McCoy.
Betty-12 slammed her fist into the control panel, coming out with a thick power cable that sparked at the open tip with blue fire. With lightning speed she advanced on the creature, plunging the heavy cable into the heart of the black horror.
The creature screamed with rage as the electricity arced through it, its body shifting shape furiously before it lost cohesion and slumped into a tar-like puddle of goo on the floor.
McCoy turned at the sound, and watched as the ship’s current finished off the creature. “Now, where was I? Oh yes.”
McCoy turned back to the wall and fired, pulling the blaster downward in a fast arc as he held the trigger, the beam lancing through the circuit and cutting it off from the power supply without going very deep into the wall. The metallic lines dimmed and faded, and the engine room filled with an almost deafening hum as everything shut down at once.
“Nooooooo!!!!!” the corpse screamed, then finally, with considerable effort, got to its rotting feet. “You fools. You have doomed us all!”
The light, the very air, around and behind the corpse of Lieutenant Tracer bended. It stepped toward them, a blaster suddenly in its withered, leathery hand. It squeezed the trigger, but the blaster beam bent back toward the dead thing that ambled toward them, hitting it in the chest.
The corpse screamed, but not from pain. It was more a shout of surprise, echoed by a million alien voices. The blaster beam seared through the shrunken chest and narrowed to a thin point and disappeared behind the corpse. The creature disintegrated, shreds swallowed by the black hole behind it.
Dropping the now dead power cable, Betty-12 turned to her commanding officer. “How did you know that would happen?”
McCoy gave his copilot a sly grin and a shrug as he holstered his blaster. “I didn’t. I just figured that those circuits Tracer and the other scrawled in here had to do something with the black hole they penned in here.”
