Hull Zero Three

by Greg Bear

  The smell of burning and destruction is fierce, accompanied by a too-familiar, fine mist of stinging droplets. “More stink,” the little girl says, wrinkling her nose.

  We form a chain and launch across the staging area, with the Tracker as our leading grapple. Crossing takes us several long, painful minutes, past tangles of broken supports and burned equipment, through a heartbreaking ring of useless landing craft. The masses all around shift and groan, wobbling after spin-down. Pieces are drifting loose.

  The far wall, closer to the bow, is less than fifty meters wide. There can’t be much more forward left to go. My memories stop at the staging area. It makes sense that there could be an observation chamber, a blister, maybe even a command center, but what are the chances it’s going to be damaged as well?

  It’s incredible that one of me reached this far and yet went back—why? Because he was alone, didn’t know where else to go? Teamwork. There has to be a group that combines all the right knowledge—I’m just not sufficient. But who puts us together?

  Who decides who gets made and what they know?

  A loose chunk of support frame revolves slowly between our party and the hatch, blocking the view, but Big Yellow joins the Tracker, leaving us for the moment to grip an I-beam bonded to a relatively stable bulkhead.

  Together, the pair stops the frame’s motion, pushes it aside, where it collides with a tangled seedship cage and sticks.

  “Hatch up here,” the Tracker announces. “Big one.”

  The opening is clear.

  The Tracker plants a sticky claw-foot against a smooth surface, takes hold of Big Yellow’s leg, swings him out, and uses him to retrieve the rest of us. Rather neatly, we separate as we’re arcing toward the wide hatch, drift through, and grab whatever we can inside.

  This could be where equipment is stored or stowed—a space about ten meters deep and five meters square. Or it could be some sort of elevator. My mind draws a blank—this area isn’t part of my job responsibility.

  Where load jockeys hang out.

  “Load jockeys,” I murmur.

  “What’s that mean?” Big Yellow asks.

  “Stevedores. Cargo managers. Crew chiefs. I’m not sure—it’s fragmented.”

  The whole journey has taken us about a third of a spin-up. “Not too bad here,” the spidery woman says. “No mist—except what’s coming through the hatch.”

  She feels her way around the hatch perimeter, then attempts to push, tug, and finally shout at it. Nothing closes the hatch. She backs away. Big Yellow tosses her a gray bag to wipe herself off.

  But our presence has triggered another response. The forward bulkhead rotates, splits, and seems to melt into the outer wall. A ring of large fluorescent panels switches on. The chamber fills with shadowless light. Now we see a series of copper-green arches—and beyond, another bulkhead, curved, shiny black, and covered with myriads of glim lights.

  As we pass through the arches, that curved bulkhead also splits into three sections, which rotate and then seem to melt aside. For a moment, my eye is confused. I think I’m looking at more glim lights but they’re different. Sharper, brighter against an even deeper darkness—very many and very tiny, like an infinite spray of luminous dust.

  We’re in a big blister, the hull’s forward observation dome. Beyond the bow, the darkness is thick with a billowing canopy of minute, cold brilliances.

  Stars. Even seeing them for the second time, they startle and surprise me.

  So lost.

  The spidery woman reaches with long fingers and kicks out, as if she’d fly through them if she could. Big Yellow makes a grab for her, but she neatly draws in her arms and legs and he misses. She floats right by us all.

  She’s the first to make it into the bow. “This is hull control,” she says. “It feels like I’ve been here already….”

  “What are those?” the girl asks, pointing at the glowing dust.

  “They’re why we’re here,” I say, and it’s all I can say, because my heart is in my throat. This is the view to where we’re going.

  Somewhere out there, maybe, is home.

  To our left stream long, grasping wisps of ionized pale blue and pink. And directly ahead, a vague grayish bull’s-eye sends back a ghostly cage of barely visible bands. Not part of the stars—part of Ship. I didn’t notice the thin bands at first, because the stars are visible right through them.

  We follow as caution permits—quickly for the girl, while Big Yellow and I trail behind her, taking it all in. The Tracker is last, protecting our rear.

  The bow chamber forms a blunt cone, with a transparent blister or dome covering the very tip, about ten meters wide and four meters deep. A hexagonal web of cables and slings allows for purchase, movement, and tie-down.

  For a long moment—too long, my caution tells me—we stare out through the dome.

  Tsinoy points to the colored streamers and wisps. The Tracker’s eyes have turned violet in the dark. What it says doesn’t register at first, I’m so lost in the spectacle. “Nebulae don’t look that bright, unless you’re very near a recent nova—or worse yet, a supernova.”

  I pull back reluctantly. There are control stations already in place, mounted on narrow pylons around the perimeter of the dome. The spidery woman is gliding from station to station, hands swiftly lighting up curved displays and panels.

  Even having seen this place, I can conjure no memory of it. Likely it will be dismantled, subsumed by the triad, before the end of our journey, when the three hulls join. But Ship’s timing seems skewed everywhere. Why is the staging area completed? And why are some of the landing ships already constructed, only to be smashed? Useless. Wasted. Like all those bodies in the freezers.

  The spidery woman seems very much at home here, rapidly becoming more and more aware of her function. That fits—she’s built for low weight or zero g. She’s probably part of the group that crews the Ship during the last few decades of journey, guiding it into orbit, preparing the way for the colonists. Does that mean she dies before I’m made?

  Assembly crew is not landing crew. We were never meant to be one big happy family. I’m almost getting used to this irregular effervescence of memory. I wonder if she’s the same or similar to the “tall female” in my book.

  “This is where we’ll do our work,” she says. “My people put us in orbit and bring the hulls together. That’s got to be the reason I’m here.” She looks back at Big Yellow and the girl—then at me, fiercely demanding confirmation.

  “Makes sense,” I say.

  “Damned right. I know what I am, if not who I am.”

  The little girl has wrapped herself around a control pylon, watching as the bigger folks try to make sense of the arrangements.

  Big Yellow grabs my shoulder as we hand-over-hand. “Where’s Tsinoy?” he asks. The Tracker seems to have vanished after saying something about nebulae.

  The spidery woman, eyes flashing, is absorbed by the panels, making her second circuit with fluid ease from one rank to the next.

  We’re not much use here—for the time being, anyway. “Let’s go back and look for it,” I suggest.

  We pull our way aft, then transit the illuminated entry. We are slowed by mist drifting through the hatch from the staging area. We keep back but move around to peer out. No sign of the Tracker—of Tsinoy.

  “Why would it leave?” Big Yellow asks. “It’s pretty loyal to the gray lady.”

  I see movement near where we first entered the staging area, a shifting patch of paleness—unfamiliar in silhouette, but then, the Tracker excels at never looking the same twice.

  “Is that it?” I point. The mist pushes me back into fresher currents of air. I can hardly see.

  Big Yellow stretches his upper torso into the acrid gloom. “Yeah,” he says finally, withdrawing. “This damned fog stings.”

  I pull another empty gray bag from the cinch of my pants and hand it to him. He wipes and dabs. “It’s coming this way.”

  “You�
�re sure it’s the Tracker and not—”

  But then it’s upon us, pushing us aside in its haste. Its touch—even its near approach—makes me groan deep in my throat. Big Yellow grabs a long, knotted arm to slow it.

  “Stuff coming up the pipe,” it announces. “Bad stuff.”

  “Human?” Big Yellow asks.

  “Shit no. Like me, only mean.”

  “How soon?” Big Yellow asks.

  “A snap. Get them out of the dome. It’s bad up there, anyway. Bright nebulae, all wrong. Pull them back here. We missed a door—in shadow. Might be a way out.”

  “Show me,” I say. Without hesitation, it grabs me—hard enough to hurt. We launch into the darkness. I’m helpless to do anything about it. Everything’s a whirl.

  Then, with astonishing deftness, Tsinoy grabs a surface and slows, bringing us both to a smooth halt, and positions me before a round depression rimmed in slowly pulsing red.

  A hatch opens.

  Still shaking, I break loose from its paw-claws but drift out of reach of anything that would allow me to make a move one way or another. I start flailing, cursing in a frantic whisper, and then the spidery woman is beside me. She tugs me to the side, where I seize a cable.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” she softly admonishes the Tracker, as if speaking to a child. The Tracker grunts and rattles ivory spines. “What’s this?” she asks.

  Big Yellow swings himself through the hatch. “More dead folks,” he says from inside, his voice muffled. “Pretty far gone.” He tosses out three corpses, dry as husks. I don’t check to see if I’m one of them. I pull up to the hatch, then in, somersaulting slowly until my hand grabs a net.

  We’re in a craft moored just aft of the control chamber. The small cabin is shaped like the inside of an egg, narrow tip near the hatch. It’s equipped with fine netting that reacts to our presence. Two more husks hang at the back, curled in each other’s arms. Big Yellow dislodges the pair, not bothering to disentangle them—just shoves them past me, past the spidery woman, through the hatch. Out and away.

  The air is dry, with a touch of the scent of death. Still much better than the drifting fog outside. Big Yellow suggests we shouldn’t leave the hatch open for long.

  The netting wants to serve—protect—guide. It pulls away from a pale blue hemisphere, then reveals a clear port about a meter in diameter. Again, we see the stars—and fifty or more kilometers away, the bow of another hull.

  “It’s a transfer egg,” the spidery woman says. “Tsinoy, you’re a marvel. I missed this completely.”

  “No time,” Tsinoy says. “Stuff coming.”

  “But I need to remember how to use it,” she says.

  The girl peeks in. “I hear a fight back there,” she says. “At least three more. They’re all going to die.”

  Big Yellow shoves out of the netting. The girl leans aside with quirked lips as he flies through the hatch. The Tracker, however, is stuck—the netting doesn’t seem to know how to let loose of those ivory spines. Tsinoy squirms and rips and finally tears its way out, then follows. The girl gives it a wide berth.

  “We could run the hull from that forward position,” the spidery woman says. She gives me a defiant look, well aware of her contradictions from a few hours before.

  The girl looks on in concern as I exit. She wants me to stay—out of danger. The mist hits me full in the face as I follow Big Yellow’s swatch of color through the staging area. He’s fairly flying through the wreckage, the framework that holds the ruined ships, toward our former residence, and points aft.

  Spin-up begins right now, of course, just to add to our joy.

  A BRAWL

  I’m surprised by how adapted I’ve become to low-weight conditions. What little intellect I can manage between my leaping and vaulting consists of calculations on how hard I’d slam into something if I don’t grab this beam or that broken piece of frame and slow myself, how fast I can spin around a cable or a rail and deflect my trajectory—long, quick curves that get longer and more demanding as spin-up reaches maximum.

  Of course, I’m not lucky enough to escape without slams and bruises—and a particularly bad miscalculation near the hatch to the wide domicile. I strike the wall and bounce away, stunned, then slowly fall outboard, until the spidery woman grabs my sleeve and, with surprising strength, hauls me to the hatch—a stretch of at least four meters.

  “The girl’s right,” she says. “Hear that?”

  I don’t. I’m not that sensitive. In awe and embarrassment, I thank her, and we follow Tsinoy and Big Yellow across the domicile, a quick enough trip—then back into the cap that covers the forward end of the gigantic water tank. We bound along the outer wall, great leaps barely planned, all adrenaline and ill-shaped instinct.

  This time, the spidery woman flips herself in one bound and flies against the tank’s huge eye. The water is in full slosh mode, waves majestically spiraling, peaking, breaking off around the slowly rotating tube. Bubbles crack and smack against the eye’s inner surface, creating a cacophony I don’t remember from my first visit.

  How anyone can hear anything is beyond me. Before I have much time to regret any of it, all for one and one for all, pain and stinging skin and eyes, we’ve passed through a series of hatches and one long tube, back to a large, cluttered spherical space outboard of the water tank—not any part of the Ship I’ve passed through before, I’m willing to swear.

  This looks more like a ruined forest ball. I close my eyes tight, then spit on my sleeve and rub to clear my vision. Now I hear voices—faint, fading. Dead vegetation hangs limp and brittle from the crisscross of cabling, and a slow, stately rain of leaves and broken limbs and branches falls around us, kicked up by something half buried in an accumulation on the inboard side.

  A mangled body glides by from where it briefly snagged on dead branches. A beaded trail of blood from a severed leg dutifully follows in its wake. The body’s head turns, eyes blinking, and I realize it’s still alive—a Scarlet-Brown, but this one seems to be female, or at least shaped differently. Then she passes below the light from the nearest hatch, and I look up to where she was and see, emerging from the outboard darkness—

  More joy. An old friend—red claw. I reacquaint with what I first observed in distinctive parts—that claw, another like it, and more, half hidden; a quartet of crushing mouths set flat in a wide, dun-colored body. Tooth-edged reddish plates clack and scissor as at least a dozen spiky red arms reach out from the outer shell and grab and jerk inward whatever they touch—branches, bits of cable, the Scarlet-Brown’s missing leg still stuck in one grinding maw, the cloth-booted foot spinning round and round. It’s falling right toward me, maybe three blinks away, so I grab a cable through the pile of forest litter, tug myself left, and watch as the horror touches down, using claws and legs to cushion the fall with an unexpected, grim grace.

  Grace is discarded as its limbs frantically shove aside debris, and the lifeless female. The mangled Scarlet-Brown is sucked away in the litter. The red horror spins about, claws raised, unable to gain traction in the litter’s shifting surface but obviously aimed in my direction.

  Just me and it, everyone else out of sight. I hope they haven’t abandoned me, but how would that be any different from the sad histories of all my past selves, all my dead and frozen duplicates?

  The horror pauses. Somehow finds a place to brace its limbs. Lifts itself out of the tangle and fragments.

  A claw rises higher, swipes, and snicks, but only grazes my elbow, my hips.

  Something even larger drops from the inboard volume of the forest ball. I can feel the mass of it but can’t make out details until it’s within the light. Large and sickly green, with red stripes and nested plates arranged every which way, each bearing more needle-sharp spikes. There’s an emerging theme. The Catalog, I think, is beginning to lack originality.

  But I am wrong.

  The new prodigy uncoils a long, thick ribbon. The ribbon twists and falls toward red claw, coiling and
spiraling as if in a light breeze. Its tip flares and pushes out a pink pulp, aiming, spreading, and then attaching to the red back—the two nightmares are joined, as if one by itself weren’t bad enough.

  Anchored, the ribbon whips in a jump-rope curve, shredding everything in its circuit. The whole assembly is less than four meters away, and the cable is about to cut me in half when Tsinoy leaps from the other side, lands on the red monster’s back, and grabs hold, paw-claws sucking down, burrowing. The Tracker’s muscles rearrange in a weird, snaky ballet.

  Then it plunges its arms deep into the red shell, lifting, cracking, tearing, crushing. The whole scene terrifies me so deeply I’d rather be dead. I’m forced to look aside, where Big Yellow and the girl, her arms around his thick neck, bound along a clear stretch of curved wall, half pulling, half flying, carrying another body, yet another Knob-Crest, still alive but stunned, deep gouges and scratches around his face and neck, his clothing in tatters.

  They leave the Knob-Crest in my care. Big Yellow also grimly plants the girl in my arms, where she squalls and squirms. “She smells one of her own,” he explains. “Keep her safe. I’ll get the others.” He looks admiringly at the Tracker, which has managed to sever the whipping cable and severely distract the combo—but not quite kill or cripple it.

  The spidery woman passes in a gray blur of long arms and legs. “Where’s your goddamned laser savior?” she shouts.

  Good question. I’ve got the girl in my arms, fighting like a hellion, and a Knob-Crest hanging on my feet and bobbing in the litter, hooting and groaning.

  Something soft brushes my cheek. I snatch at it—a feathery strand that suddenly loops and stings my face and burns my fingers. The air is filling with more strands, all uncoiling from a leathery black mass oozing along the cables and draping from dead branches, scattering fragments of leaf dust. The mass is trimmed with a pale fringe of long, stinging tendrils, each tipped with a shining blue eye the size of a marble, all of which twitch and stare, directing the stripping, wrapping length behind.