by Rok Chillah
Mahaffey cut in: "And then you discovered drugs and whores and became a juvenile delinquent."
Tomson took the needling in stride. "I did develop a case of clap early on, because I discovered those young ladies before I could afford protection. I learn quickly though, and I caught on a lot faster than you are catching on, you son of a bitch." There was no humor in Tomson's voice by the time he reached the last sentence of that short, threatening speech.
"Quiet," Ridge said. "Here we are." They stepped onto the gridded platform that would take them to their front door. Breathing a collective sigh of relief, they closed the railings around the moving platform, which was about the size of a living room. Ridge manipulated the simple lever controls with their black rubber ball grips, and the platform quietly started moving on well-greased chains and sprockets. It made a soft, fatty sort of rattling bicycle chain sound as it traversed the last few yards of the void. The platform swung gently around a turn, around a corner in the high walls, and moved slightly upward into a spill of light. The seven staffers waited as it glided over a ledge richly splashed with homey yellow light that spilled from the overhanging windows of WorkPod01. The platform rose up, elevator fashion, and attached itself like a front porch to the metal hull of WorkPod01. The metal walls were solid steel, well riveted and tough, and painted a dull chariot red. The sealed doors of the small work factory glowered below, visible through the floor grating. Ridge felt a deep sense of relief. "Okay," he said, "now all we have to do is get in."
"That's just the trick," Mahaffey said with a hysterical little rising laugh. "We can't get in. We're locked out, and there is a reason."
"Shut up, you fool," Jerez said, banging on the sealed steel portal with the flat of her hand.
Lantz followed suit. She banged on the steel with her fist, raising and lowering a muscular arm. Nothing. Ridge shuddered, realizing instinctively that Mahaffey was most likely right. They were locked out. Like a man in a bad dream, Ridge watched the members of the team look at each other in consternation, wailing and banging on the steel. Mahaffey is right, Ridge thought. We are truly hosed. We are never going to be let in there again. All I want to know is why? No, all I want is to lie down with Brenna and pull the covers over our heads and listen to that lullaby. But first we'd have to get in, and it doesn't look like we are ever meant to get in again.
"Okay, now what?" Tomson said as he pushed his way gently through the panicked crowd. He did not bang on the locked, sealed steel doors. Instead he laid one palm on the steel and then closed his eyes as if slipping into some kind of psychoactive dream. Sweat rimmed his face, which turned a sickly shade of yellow. He opened his eyes and shook his head. "Those vibes are bad, my friends. We can never go in again. We're finished."
"That's insane," Ridge found himself saying. Several others yelled out in agreement.
Tomson shook his head again. "Sorry, folks. I'm not being psychic. I was just thinking about all that's happened. There was no key. We locked the place up and threw the key away, so to speak."
Ridge looked carefully along the grating and down the ledge below, but saw no sign of the dazed, bloodied man who had pounded on the window. Mudmen must have taken care of him, Ridge thought. He could imagine the lunch feast they must have had in the dark below. Shivering, he walked close to the riveted wall, beside Tomson, and gripped the railing. "If you and another person will brace me, I'll climb up and take a look inside." With Tomson and Yu supporting him, Ridge climbed up onto the railing. The forward sloping windows were still several feet above his head. The two men supported his legs as he stood on tiptoe. He leaned palms-forward against the wall and pressed his right cheek against the cold steel. It was to no avail. He must get higher. "Grab me if I fall," he said. Carefully, he flexed his knees. He rose up and down several times, aiming carefully how to place his fingertips. Then he jumped. His fingertips caught on the steel rim under the window. Before his grip could weaken, he pulled himself up. As he did so, he slipped his fingers into a flat area just under the thick plate windows. He figured he had enough strength to chin-up for about a minute. Dismissing his fears of plummeting down past the platform, he pulled himself up. His entire torso trembled at the effort, but he managed to raise himself high enough to get his eyes above sill level. What he saw puzzled him. The interior of WorkPod01 was well lit and clean-but there was nothing there. There were a number of oblong, slightly glowing bluish-white objects that seemed to form the tops of a number of boxes. There were intricate designs all around on the walls, which glowed with light from the boxes on the floor. In the ceiling were fixtures that looked like fluorescent tubes, but they looked cold and gray, emitting no light. There was no sign of life in WorkPod01. There was no hint of left over dinners, of chairs, of tables, of moon doors, of showers, of exercise sets, of ancient Homeric poems stashed on shelves. All the clutter he remembered was missing. It did seem that the overall floor plan vaguely resembled that which he remembered from the galley. The only other thing he glimpsed that made sense, before his strength gave out and he dropped down to the grating among his team members, were one or two places on the wall with rounded rectangles that might have been the viewing screens where the crew had seen and heard Captain Venable speak to them.
"Well?" Tomson asked. "What did you see?"
Ridge shook his head as they all crowded around. He knew his face must be pale, and their faces reflected his shock. "Nothing," he said. "I saw nothing that I recognized."
"Did someone clean it all up?" Jerez asked. The others babbled simultaneously with similar questions and anxieties. Ridge shook his head and staggered to the railing, trying to assimilate what he'd seen, or not seen. "It's crazy," he said, feeling a sickness in his gut. He banged his fist on the cold steel and yelled: "There's nothing there. No galley, no showers, no books, no moon doors, no cubicles. It's like we never existed."
"We are ghosts," Mahaffey said. His eyes looked crazy, and he started walking in circles on the platform. "We are dead people."
Brenna smiled. "We bleed when we are hurt, and you see that Mughali died. That hardly makes us ghosts."
"Bullshit," Tomson told Mahaffey. "I pinch myself, I feel it. That means I am real. You're talking nuts."
Ridge tried to grasp Mahaffey by the belt. The young man was tall, and strong, and wild. He was filled with emotions as he windmilled his arms. "Don't you see? It's all a bunch of bullshit." He looked at Jerez. "Can you tell me the names of your children?" She stared mutely back at him. He looked at Yu. "You say the woman with the tits came home every day for lunch. It's a long commute between Pudong and Fengjiang to the south. It would take her hours each way in heavy traffic. It's not real, Yu." He turned from the stricken Yu and said to Brenna: "Your children. What are their names?" She slowly shook her head, her eyes filled with denial. "You see?" he continued. "None of you remember critical things because it's all bullshit." With that, he leapt onto the railing.
He balanced precariously, squatting on the railing. Both feet were on the thick metal bar, and he leaned left with one hand touching the railing while the other hand windmilled in space for balance. Several people shouted, and several reached for him. Ridge wanted to reach out and grab Mahaffey, but felt paralyzed, partly because it all happened so quickly and partly because he had been wondering all morning what were the names of his own children. He couldn't even really picture them in his mind's eye, much as he loved them, much as he thought about nothing but his family. Mahaffey rose fully to his feet on the slender railing. He balanced there for a minute, rotating his arms while several people screamed and reached for him. Tomson dropped his gun to the grating with a loud clang and started to wrap his arms around Mahaffey's legs, but wasn't quick enough. With a wild look in his eyes, and a long trailing scream, Mahaffey jumped. Ridge watched him sailing downward. Mahaffey's shirt rippled in a breeze, and his arms and legs stuck out as if he were jumping onto a horse. He fell out of sight and everyone on the grating fell silent until they heard a single sodden splash far b
elow. It was a splattering sound, like a palm striking down on a countertop, or a melon falling from a window to a sidewalk, and the sound left no doubt as to Mahaffey's outcome, which was the end of all struggle and some sort of eternal peace amid the debris of the universe here in this mysterious place, this dead or half-dead ship of ghosts drifting far from the sun. The remaining six team members held each other and sobbed. Several stood at the railing, clenching their fists around the steel where Mahaffey had last stood, and looked down.
"Ideas?" Tomson said, retrieving his weapon and slipping it into his belt. His eyes had a haunted look as he stared out at the distant surfaces inside the ship. Even then, Ridge thought he glimpsed tiny blurs of reddish light moving stealthily and strategically into position in the void. Were it not for the sobbing of Brenna and Yu, he thought he would clearly hear the flute drones of a dozen rounded mouths amid the slag and dross.
"I'm fresh out," Ridge said. He could almost feel the impact of his words striking his team members like a blow, sending them reeling. He shook his head to clear it. "Look, while there is life there is hope. We have no idea what's going on here. Mahaffey lost his mind and bailed out. That's not the solution I recommend."
"What do you recommend?" Tomson said.
"Yeah, what bright idea do you have now?" Jerez added.
Ridge sighed and looked up and down the steel wall, which was tighter than a safe. "We might try to make our way to the CP. We might try to find Venable in person and have a serious discussion about just what the hell is going on inside his ship, if he knows."
"And where is the CP?" Tomson asked softly.
"Where is Venable?" Yu asked.
"That's the next thing we should try to find out," Ridge said.
Chapter 8
We're going to make our way forward to the CP," Ridge said. What else could he do?
"Where exactly is that?" Tomson asked.
"I know it's toward the bow in front," Ridge said. Seeing the skeptical looks around him, he added: "I am not going to lie to you. I do not know where the Command Post is, where Captain Venable is, where the Bridge is. All I know is we can't stay here because those creatures out on the walls are just waiting to have us for lunch. Look down." There was a collective gasp as his five surviving team mates stepped to the railing and looked down. Way below, they saw a wriggling gray blur. Nobody needed to tell them it as all one could see of the mudmen devouring Mahaffey's remains in the faint twilight below.
"I'm with you," Tomson said. Several others made affirmative sounds and nodded. Ridge noted that he, Tomson, and Yu still had guns. Ridge told them: "I seem to remember that when we headed to the work area, we were going backwards. That is, we were moving toward the stern. That means we need to go that way." He pointed past WorkPod01 into the darkness. He stepped to the railing and looked down along the ledge below. "Looks to me like this platform will travel some distance."
Lantz said: "Anything but stay here. Let's go." Suddenly, Ridge thought, it was three women and three men. The three women (Brenna, Lantz, Jerez) stood in a line and echoed Lantz's sentiment. Ridge, Yu, and Tomson nodded their own agreement. All six heaved a collective sigh and shrugged. Ridge spoke quietly for all: "Let's get going." He moved the well-greased levers of the platform. Ridge felt a slight lurch, and those bicycle noises again of chains dragging through grease-packed sprockets, and the platform began to move. The platform moved laterally along the wall. In minutes WorkPod01 looked bare as the platform moved away from the island of light, and the group were enveloped again in that mix of dim but brassy hard light and equally dim, soft chocolaty shadow inked hard-black around the edges.
At one point, they passed through a particularly grayish-dark, charcoal pool of night. Arrayed on a high wall ledge were about six mudmen sitting in a silent array. They stared directly and enigmatically at the humans from about 50 feet away with dim red eyes. The humans on the platform shuddered and drew closely together. Ridge felt bodies against his. He felt the trembling of his team mates, and he felt his own body trembling against theirs. He felt his teeth chattering, and felt his hands grow cold as he looked at the silently staring, immutable kachina-like mudmen masks with their rounded mouths. They blew noises like a faint wind, a soft susurrus, a tootling that echoed from other spots. The island of red eyes and round mouths passed, but Ridge knew he had not seen the last of the mudmen.
The platform moved slowly through the darkness, an island of light. The monorail on which the platform moved curved gradually along the inner surface of the ship. The surface was curved, suggesting a long zeppelin-like cylinder. The surface was pitted and uneven, and glowed with dim lighting from inside the ship itself. The platform bathed in a patch of hard industrial light as it moved. The moving light rippled over fire-glazed pores, glassy waves, coal-like flows of glittering carbon debris. Here and there like rats on a dockyard, mudmen skittered from one vantage point to another. Always they stared hungrily at the human cargo passing so temptingly by them. Their whispering and moaning and fluting got on everyone's nerves. Jerez sat down on the grating and held her hands over her ears. Tears streamed from her eyes as she sobbed, and mucus spiderwebbed between her open mouth, her chin, her elbows, and her knees. Ridge worried that Jerez might be the next to lose her mind and go over the side. Lantz knelt beside her and stroked Jerez's hair. Brenna squatted on the other side and murmured encouragement. Jerez kept shaking her head and protesting. Her sobs grew louder, and the men exchanged looks of growing frustration. Ridge felt the fear in his bones, and the other two men had that glazed, hunted look in their eyes. Tomson told Yu: "Don't even think about it." Yu's hands hesitated near the butt of his gun. "Save your charge," Tomson told him.
Ridge told Lantz: "Keep trying to reach the CP on your com. We'll take turns trying. We have to keep trying to reach Captain Venable."
"What if he's dead too?" Yu said.
Ridge shrugged. "I can't answer impossible questions. You've heard of living from day to day? We're living from minute to minute here, pal. Bear with us and try not to make it any harder."
Jerez yelled through her tears, without opening her eyes: "He's right. We are all doomed. Mahaffey knew the score. You saw what they did to Mughali."
"Easy," Brenna said. She looked up at Ridge. "We need to find help."
Ridge nodded. "That's what we're trying to do. Everyone, keep an eye out for signs of civilization."
Tomson stepped close. "We've got to be asking some hard questions here, Ridge. I'm all for being civilized and calm. I'm all for singing hymns and keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. It would help though if we knew what the adversity is."
Ridge felt like slapping him. He wanted to ask why people were asking him these questions. Why me? Then he remembered that he'd accepted the leadership position and now he must perform. This was what he got paid for. Or was it?
"Ridge?" Tomson said, leaning close with a quizzical look. "You okay?
Ridge swallowed hard and couldn't answer. He was paralyzed with fear of the unknown, terrified at what he might learn if his memory really did open up. His brain felt cloudy, and maybe that was good. Maybe it was bad, but it was a kind of balm to ease the echo of questions Mahaffey had left hanging in the air.
Tomson shook him gently. "Man, snap out of it. You look the way I feel." The others were looking at him too, Ridge saw, even Jerez with the spittle hanging dumbly from her chin and her eyes open in animal fascination so that she could momentarily forget her own dreadful thoughts. Ridge could not remember precisely the moment he'd signed the papers or the moment he'd sworn in for Federal Earth Service. Like so much of what he recalled, it was a welter of minute details wrapped around fuzzy generalities. He felt suffocated, as if the air were strangling him. Was there a virus or a chemical in the air that made them forget? "I don't know," Ridge said softly. "I don't know. All I do know is that we need to keep on. We must not lose hope. We must not let fear and terror win."
Tomson laughed. "Those are the moons of
Mars. Phobos and Deimos. Fear and Terror. You think the moons of Mars are screwing with us?" He laughed harshly, then stopped. "Sorry, folks. Poor joke. I'm trying to bring a little levity into the proceedings. Ridge is right. We need to sing those hymns and canoe gracefully through that dark jungle. These are the times that try men's and women's souls." He did a little jig.
"You're losing your mind," Yu said. His face looked stark and sweaty.
Brenna laughed gently. She rose, keeping one hand on Jerez's head to offer comfort. "Tomson is the sanest person among us. He's trying to keep our minds off our troubles. Aren't you?" She looked at Tomson.
Tomson grinned widely, and Ridge loved him for it. Tomson said: "That's the idea, lady. I want us all to get back home in one piece. How far are we from Triton? Another day? Another week? A year?"
Ridge said: "We'll find out soon. We'll find the CP and do visual checks if nothing else. Look at the bright side. The ship has power. We were talking with the Bridge just a few hours ago. There has to be hope."
"That's right," Tomson said, "we have to keep going."
Silently, the platform continued its slow sweep along the inside of the ship. As the turn became sharper, it was evident they were coming to the bow section, where the ship's cross-section was smaller and the hull more sharply turned toward an eventual point. As Ridge remembered it, the ship was huge, with rounded points at bow and stern. The ship rotated to create artificial gravity on its inner surfaces. On ships like this that plied the solar system for years at a time, one typically found weightless facilities-cargo storage, certain types of factories like those creating high-precision crystals, and even sporting events-concentrated along the mid-axis. Normal living quarters and work areas were along the inner surface of the central hull, where the diameter was slightly larger, and the pseudograv somewhat stronger. As the platform approached the bow section, they saw more lighting ahead, which meant the mudmen were probably scarcer. The bow section contained a smaller rotating cylinder some 400 feet long and 200 feet in diameter, with about as much floor space as a good-size ten story office building on Earth for comparison. A wall separated the bow from midsection. The wall was covered with lights, viewing bubbles, external elevators, dangling hoses, a thousand features that seemed brownish and ominous, in this half-light, to Ridge's eyes. He saw no mudmen in the area, but that didn't mean they weren't around-or had crewmembers in the bow managed to exclude them?