07-Beowulf Shaeffer

by Larry Niven

  "You got it!" Angel crowed like a rooster, and slapped at the back of the chair, holding himself down with his other hand. He turned a gloating look on us, turned back just as suddenly. "The ship! It's getting away!"

  "No." Forward was bent over the console. "I see him. Good, he is coming back, straight toward us. This time there will be no tugs to warn the pilot."

  The Grabber swung ponderously toward the point where I'd seen Hobo Kelly disappear. It moved centimeters at a time, pulling a massive invisible weight.

  And Ausfaller was coming back to rescue us. He'd be a sitting duck unless --

  I reached up with my toes, groping for the first and fourth buttons on my falling jumper.

  The weaponry in my wonderful suit hadn't helped me against Jinxian strength and speed. But flatlanders are less than limber, and so are Jinxians. Forward had tied my hands and left it at that.

  I wrapped two sets of toes around the buttons and tugged.

  My legs were bent pretzel-fashion. I had no leverage. But the first button tore loose, and then the thread. Another invisible weapon to battle Forward's portable bottomless hole.

  The thread pulled the fourth button loose. I brought my feet down to where they belonged, keeping the thread taut, and pushed backward. I felt the Sinclair molecule chain sinking into the pillar.

  The Grabber was still swinging.

  When the thread was through the pillar, I could bring it up in back of me and try to cut my bonds. More likely I'd cut my wrists and bleed to death, but I had to try. I wondered if I could do anything before Forward launched the black hole.

  A cold breeze caressed my feet.

  I looked down. Thick fog boiled out around the pillar.

  Some very cold gas must be spraying through the hairfine crack.

  I kept pushing. More fog formed. The cold was numbing. I felt the jerk as the magic thread cut through. Now the wrists --

  Liquid helium?

  Forward had moored us to the main superconducting power cable.

  That was probably a mistake. I pulled my feet forward carefully, steadily, feeling the thread bite through on the return cut.

  The Grabber had stopped swinging. Now it moved on its arm like a blind questing worm as Forward made fine adjustments. Angel was beginning to show the strain of holding himself upside down.

  My feet jerked slightly. I was through. My feet were terribly cold, almost without sensation. I let the buttons go, left them floating up toward the dome, and kicked back hard with my heels.

  Something shifted. I kicked again.

  Thunder and lightning flared around my feet.

  I jerked my knees up to my chin. The lightning crackled and flashed white light into the billowing fog. Angel and Forward turned in astonishment. I laughed at them, letting them see it. Yes, gentlemen, I did it on purpose.

  The lightning stopped. In the sudden silence Forward was screaming, " -- know what you've done?"

  There was a grinding crunch, a shuddering against my back. I looked up.

  A piece had been bitten out of the Grabber.

  I was upside down and getting heavier. Angel suddenly pivoted around his grip on Forward's chair. He hung above the dome, above the sky. He screamed.

  My legs gripped the pillar hard. I felt Carlos's feet fumbling for a foothold and heard Carlos's laughter.

  Near the edge of the dome a spear of light was rising. Hobo Kelly's drive, decelerating, growing larger. Otherwise the sky was clear and empty. And a piece of the dome disappeared with a snapping sound.

  Angel screamed and dropped. Just above the dome he seemed to flare with blue light.

  He was gone.

  Air roared out through the dome -- and more was disappearing into something that had been invisible. Now it showed as a blue pinpoint drifting toward the floor. Forward had turned to watch it fall.

  Loose objects fell across the chamber, looped around the pinpoint at meteor speed, or fell into it with bursts of light. Every atom of my body felt the pull of the thing, the urge to die in an infinite fall. Now we hung side by side from a horizontal pillar. I noted with approval that Carlos's mouth was wide open, like mine, to clear his lungs so that they wouldn't burst when the air was gone.

  Daggers in my ears and sinuses, pressure in my gut.

  Forward turned back to the controls. He moved one knob hard over. Then he opened the seat belt and stepped out and up and fell.

  Light flared. He was gone.

  The lightning-colored pinpoint drifted to the floor and into it. Above the increasing roar of air I could hear the grumbling of rock being pulverized, dwindling as the black hole settled toward the center of the asteroid.

  The air was deadly thin but not gone. My lungs thought they were gasping vacuum. But my blood was not boiling. I'd have known it.

  So I gasped and kept gasping. It was all I had attention for. Black spots flickered before my eyes, but I was still gasping and alive when Ausfaller reached us, carrying a clear plastic package and an enormous handgun.

  He came in fast, on a rocket backpack. Even as he decelerated, he was looking around for something to shoot. He returned in a loop of fire. He studied us through his faceplate, possibly wondering if we were dead.

  He flipped the plastic package open. It was a thin sack with a zipper and a small tank attached. He had to dig for a torch to cut our bonds. He freed Carlos first, helped him into the sack. Carlos bled from the nose and ears. He was barely mobile. So was I, but Ausfaller got me into the sack with Carlos and zipped it up. Air hissed in around us.

  I wondered what came next. As an inflated sphere the rescue bag was too big for the tunnels. Ausfaller had thought of that. He fired at the dome, blasted a gaping hole in it, and flew us out on the rocket backpack.

  Hobo Kelly was grounded nearby. I saw that the rescue bag wouldn't fit the air lock, either, and Ausfaller confirmed my worst fear. He signaled us by opening his mouth wide. Then he zipped open the rescue bag and half carried us into the air lock while the air was still roaring out of our lungs.

  When there was air again, Carlos whispered, "Please don't do that anymore."

  "It should not be necessary anymore." Ausfaller smiled. "Whatever it was you did, well done. I have two well-equipped autodocs to repair you. While you are healing, I will see about recovering the treasures within the asteroid."

  Carlos held up a hand, but no sound came. He looked like something risen from the dead: blood running from nose and ears, mouth wide open, one feeble hand raised against gravity.

  "One thing," Ausfaller said briskly. "I saw many dead men; I saw no living ones. How many were there? Am I likely to meet opposition while searching?"

  "Forget it," Carlos croaked. "Get us out of here. Now."

  Ausfaller frowned. "What -- "

  "No time. Get us out."

  Ausfaller tasted something sour. "Very well. First the autodocs." He turned, but Carlos's strengthless hand stopped him.

  "Futz, no. I want to see this," Carlos whispered.

  Again Ausfaller gave in. He trotted off to the control room. Carlos tottered after him. I tottered after them both, wiping blood from my nose, feeling half-dead myself. But I'd half guessed what Carlos expected, and I didn't want to miss it.

  We strapped down. Ausfaller fired the main thruster. The rock surged away.

  "Far enough," Carlos whispered presently. "Turn us around."

  Ausfaller took care of that. Then, "What are we looking for?"

  "You'll know."

  "Carlos, was I right to fire on the tugs?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "Good. I was worried. Then Forward was the ship eater?"

  "Yeah."

  "I did not see him when I came for you. Where is he?"

  Ausfaller was annoyed when Carlos laughed and more annoyed when I joined him. It hurt my throat. "Even so, he saved our lives," I said. "He must have turned up the air pressure just before he jumped. I wonder why he did that."

  "Wanted to be remembered," said Carlos. "Nobody else
knew what he'd done. Ahh -- "

  I looked just as part of the asteroid collapsed into itself, leaving a deep crater.

  "It moves slower at apogee. Picks up more matter," said Carlos.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Later, Sigmund. When my throat grows back."

  "Forward had a hole in his pocket," I said helpfully.

  The other side of the asteroid collapsed. For a moment lightning seemed to flare in there.

  Then the whole dirty snowball was growing smaller.

  I thought of something Carlos had probably missed. "Sigmund, has this ship got automatic sunscreens?"

  "Of course we've got -- "

  There was a universe-eating flash of light before the screen went black. When the screen cleared, there was nothing to see but stars.

  PROCRUSTES

  Asleep, my mind plays it all back in fragments and dreams. From time to time a block of nerves wakes:

  That's some kind of ARM weapon! Move it move it too late blam. My head rolls loose on black sand. Bones shattered, ribs and spine. Fear worse than the agony. Agony fading and I'm gone.

  Legs try to kick. Nothing moves. Again, harder, move! No go. The 'doc floats nicely on the lift plate, but its mass is resisting me. Push! Voice behind me, I turn, she's holding some kind of tube. Blam. My head bounces on sand. Agony flaring, sensation fading. Try to hang on, stay lucid ... but everything turns mellow.

  My balance swings wildly around my inner ear. Where's the planet's axis? Fafnir doesn't have polar caps. The ancient lander is flying itself. Carlos looks worried, but Feather's having the time of her life.

  Sprawled across the planet's face, a hurricane flattened along one edge. Under the vast cloud fingerprint, a ruddy snake divides the blue of a world-girdling ocean. A long, narrow continent runs almost pole to pole.

  The lander reenters over featureless ocean. Nothing down there seems to be looking at us. I'm taking us down fast. Larger islands have low, flat buildings on them. Pick a little one. Hover while flame digs the lamplighter pit wider and deeper, until the lander sinks into the hole with inches to spare. Plan A is right on track.

  I remember how Plan A ended. The Surgery program senses my distress and turns me off.

  I'm in Carlos Wu's 'doc, in the intensive care cavity. The Surgery program prods my brain, running me through my memories, maintaining the patterns lest they fuzz out to nothing while my brain and body heal.

  I must be terribly damaged.

  Waking was sudden. My eyes popped open, and I was on my back, my nose two inches from glass. Sunlight glared through scattered clouds. Display lights glowed above my eyebrows. I felt fine, charged with energy.

  Ye gods, how long had I slept? All those dreams ... dream memories.

  I tried to move. I was shrink-wrapped in elastic. I wiggled my arm up across my chest, with considerable effort, and up to the displays. It took me a few seconds to figure them out.

  Biomass tank. nearly empty. Treatment: pages of data, horrifying ... terminated, successful. Date: Ohmygod. Four months! I was out for four months and eleven days!

  I typed, Open:

  The dark glass lid retracted, sunlight flared, and I shut my eyes tight. After a while I pulled myself over the rim of the intensive care cavity and rolled out.

  My balance was all wrong. I landed like a lumpy sack, on sand, and managed not to yell or swear. Who might hear? Sat up, squinting painfully, and looked around.

  I was still on the island.

  It was weathered coral, nearly symmetrical, with a central peak. The air was sparkling clear, and the ocean went on forever, with another pair of tiny islands just touching the horizon.

  I was stark naked and white as a bone, in the glare of a yellow-white dwarf sun. The air was salty and thick with organic life, sea life.

  Where was everybody?

  I tried to stand, wobbled, gave it up, and crawled around into the shadow of the 'doc. I still felt an amazing sense of well-being, as if I could solve anything the universe could throw at me.

  During moments of half wakefulness I'd somehow worked out where I must be. Here it stood, half coffin and half chemical lab, massive and abandoned on the narrow black sand beach. A vulnerable place to leave such a valuable thing, but this was where I'd last seen it, ready to be loaded into the boat.

  Sunlight could damage me in minutes, kill me in hours, but Carlos Wu's wonderful 'doc was no ordinary mall autodoctor. It was state of the art, smarter than me in some respects. It would cure anything the sun could do to me.

  I pulled myself to my feet and took a few steps. Ouch! The coral cut my feet. The 'doc could cure that, too, but it hurt.

  Standing, I could see most of the island. The center bulged up like a volcano. Fafnir coral builds a flat island with a shallow cone rising at the center, a housing for a symbiote, the lamplighter. I'd hovered the lander above the cone while belly jets scorched out the lamplighter nest until it was big enough to hold the lander.

  Just me and the 'doc and a dead island. I'd have to live in the 'doc. Come out at night, like a vampire. My chance of being found must be poor if no passing boat had found me in these past four-plus months.

  I climbed. The coral cut my hands and feet and knees. From the cone I'd be able to see the whole island.

  The pit was two hundred feet across. The bottom was black and smooth and seven or eight feet below me. Feather had set the lander to melt itself down slowly, radiating not much heat over many hours. Several inches of rainwater now covered the slag, and something sprawled in the muck.

  It might be a man ... a tall man, possibly raised in low gravity. Too tall to be Carlos. Or Sharrol, or Feather, and who was left?

  I jumped down. Landed clumsily on the smooth slag and splashed full length in the water. Picked myself up, unhurt.

  My toes could feel an oblong texture, lines and ridges, the shapes within the lander that wouldn't melt. Police could determine what this thing had been if they ever looked; but why would they look?

  The water felt good on my burned feet. And on my skin. I was already burned. Albinos can't take yellow dwarf sunlight.

  A corpse was no surprise, given what I remembered. I looked it over. It had been wearing local clothing for a man: boots, loose pants with a rope tie, a jacket encrusted with pockets. The jacket was pierced with a great ragged hole front and back. That could only have been made by Feather's horrible ARM weapon. This close, the head ... I'd thought it must be under the water, but there was no head it all. There were clean white bones, and a neck vertebra cut smoothly in half.

  I was hyperventilating. Dizzy. I sat down next to the skeleton so that I wouldn't fall.

  These long bones looked more than four months dead. Years, decades ... wait, now. We'd scorched the nest, but there would be lamplighter soldiers left outside. They would have swarmed down and stripped the bones.

  I found I was trying to push my back through a wall of fused coral. My empty stomach heaved. This was much worse than anything I'd imagined. I knew who this was.

  Sunlight burned my back. My eyes were going wonky in the glare. Time was not on my side: I was going to be much sicker much quicker than I liked.

  I made myself pull the boots loose, shook the bones out, and put them on. They were too big.

  The jacket was a sailor's survival jacket, local style. The shoulders looked padded: shoulder floats. The front and sides had been all pockets, well stuffed, but front and back had been tom to confetti.

  I stripped it off him and began searching pockets.

  No wallet, no ID. Tissue pack. The shrapnel remains of a hand computer. Several pockets were sealed: emergency gear, stuff you wouldn't want to open by accident; and some of those had survived.

  A knife of exquisite sharpness in a built-in holster. Pocket torch. A ration brick. I bit into the brick and chewed while I searched. Mag specs, one lens shattered, but I put them on anyway. Without dark glasses my pink albino eyes would go blind.

  Sun block spray, unharmed:
good. A pill dispenser, broken, but in a pocket still airtight. Better! Tannin secretion pills!

  The boots were shrinking, adapting to my feet. It felt friendly, reassuring. My most intimate friends on this island.

  I was still dizzy. Better let the 'doc take care of me now; take the pills afterward. I shook broken ribs out of the jacket. Shook the pants empty. Balled the clothing and tossed it out of the hole. Tried to follow it.

  My fingers wouldn't reach the rim.

  "After all this, what a stupid way to die," I said to the memory of Sharrol Janss. "What do I do now? Build a ladder out of bones?" If I got out of this hole, I'd think it through before I ever did anything.

  I knelt; I yelled and jumped. My fingers, palms, forearms gripped rough coral. I pulled myself out and lay panting, sweating, bleeding, crying.

  I limped back to the 'doc, wearing boots now, holding the suit spread above me for a parasol. I was feverish with sunburn.

  I couldn't take boots into the ICC. Wait. Think. Wind? Waves? I tied the clothes in a bundle around the boots, and set it on the 'doc next to the faceplate. I climbed into the intensive care cavity and pulled the lid down.

  Sharrol would wait an hour longer, if she was still alive. And the kids. And Carlos.

  I did not expect to fall asleep.

  Asleep, feverish with sunburn. The Surgery program tickles blocks of nerves, plays me like a complex toy. In my sleep I feel raging thirst, hear a thunderclap, taste cinnamon or coffee, clench a phantom fist.

  My skin wakes. Piloerection runs in ripples along my body, then a universal tickle, then pressure ... like that feather-crested snakeskin Sharrol put me into for Carlos's party ...

  Sharrol, sliding into her own rainbow-scaled bodysuit, stopped halfway. "You don't really want to do this, do you?"

  "I'll tough it out. How do I look?" I'd never developed the least sense of flatlander style. Sharrol picked my clothes.

  "Half man, half snake," she said. "Me?"