Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by James Tiptree Jr.

  “Okay, skip it. Hell, if she works out at all she may actually be a fair asset.”

  And so it was that CP went out to space, with a clause in her Articles certifying her for trial on long-run work.

  On her very first run, a check on a large new incoming asteroid apparently dislodged from cis-Plutonian orbit, she proved the senior Personnel man right. She cleaned and dumped garbage and kept the capsule orderly and in repair at all times, she managed to make the food tastier than the men believed possible, she helped everybody do anything disagreeable, she nursed two men through space dysentery and massaged the pain out of another’s sprained back; she kept her mouth strictly shut at all times, and performed her sexual duties as a “human waste can” with competence, although she could not quite successfully simulate real desire. (It was after this trip that she began to be known as Cold Pig.) She provoked no personal tensions; in fact, two of the crew forgot even to say good-bye to her, although they gave her superior marks in their report forms.

  After several repetitions of this performance she began to be regarded by the Planners as something of an asset, as the Personnel chief had predicted. The crews didn’t exactly love her, and made a great exhibition of groaning when Cold Pig showed up on their trip rosters; but secretly they were not displeased. Cold Pig missions were known to go well and be as comfortable as possible. And she could fill in for half a dozen specialties in emergencies. Things never went totally wrong with Cold Pig aboard. The Pig began to be privately regarded as lucky. She achieved a shadowy kind of status in the growing space network.

  But not with Captain Bob Meich, on whose ship, Calgary, her story begins. Captain Bob Meich loathed her, and despised a certain fact about Cold Pig that was the most precious possession of her life.

  Among the various Articles of Contract by which she was bound, there were two unusual clauses that were all she had worked for, and which she prized above life: Cold Pig, almost alone among thousands of women in space, was fully certified for solo flight.

  She had insisted on a general flight clause at first signing, and she had the attested experience to back it up. Authority showed no particular resistance: space work includes thousands of hours of dull routine ferrying of stuff from here to there, which the men disliked, and quite a few station women were allowed to help out. Cold Pig’s looks were helpful here too; clearly her goings and comings would never cause a ripple. But Cold Pig had her sights set higher than this.

  Once in space, she set out to achieve a solo cert for every type of rocket going. She piled up flight time between all her assignments. She would fly anything anywhere, even if it meant three months done in foul air, herding a rock in an old torch with a broken-down air regenerator she could barely keep functional. Her eagerness to fly the lousiest trips slowly made her an asset here, too.

  The payoff came when there was a bad rock-hit on a hot new short-run mission; Cold Pig not only saved a couple of lives, but flew the new model home alone and docked it like a pro. The wounded captain she had saved was grateful enough to help her get the second Article she coveted, the big one: it was formally stipulated that if a scout became disabled on a multiship mission, Carol Page would be assigned as replacement to take over his mission and ship, solo, until he recovered. This was extended to include flying the mother ship itself should all other crew be totally disabled.

  Thus it was that one day Cold Pig came head to head with Captain Bob Meich of the Calgary, on the extreme-range mission on the far side of Uranus, with four of the ship’s five scouts out on long exploratory flights. Don Lamb, the fifth and last, lay stranded helpless in his sleeper with a broken hip, and his scout ship idled in its berth.

  “No cunt is going to fly off my ship while I’m breathing,” Meich said levelly. “I don’t give a flying fuck what your Articles say. If you want to make a point of it back at Station you can try. Or you can have a little accident and go out the waste hole, too. I am the captain and what I say goes.”

  “But, sir, that data Don’s ship was assigned to is supposed to be crucial—”

  He glared coldly at her; not sane, she saw. Nor was she, but she didn’t know that.

  “I’ll show you once and for all what’s crucial. Follow me, Pig.” He spat out the name.

  She followed him to the scout access tunnel; all the ports but one were empty. He opened the port of Don’s scouter and crawled into the small capsule. Calgary’s pseudogravity of rotation was heavy out here; she could hear him grunting.

  “Watch.” He jerked the keys from the console and pocketed them. Then he yanked free the heavy pry-bar, and deliberately smashed it again and again into the on-board computer. Cold Pig was gasping.

  He crawled out.

  “Take your pants off.”

  He used her there on the cold grids beside the wreckage of her hopes, used her hard and with pain, holding her pants across her ugly face so she nearly smothered.

  At one point a bulge in her shirt pocket attracted his notice: her notebook. He jerked it out, kneeling his weight hurtfully on her shoulders, and flipped through it.

  “What the hell’s this? Poetry?” He read in ferocious falsetto scorn: “With delicate mad hands against his sordid bars—aagh!” He flung the little book savagely toward the waster. It went skittering heavily across the grids, tearing pages.

  Cold Pig, supine and in pain, twisted to see it, could not suppress a cry.

  Meich was not normally a sexual man; several times she had felt him failing, and each time he slapped her head or invented some new indignity; but now he grinned jubilantly, not knowing that he had sealed his own fate. He jerked her head forward and, finally, ejaculated.

  “All right. That’s as close as you get to flying, Pig. Just remember that. Now get my dinner.”

  He was tired and withdrawn; he hit her covered face once more and left her. Cold Pig was grateful for the cover; she hadn’t cried before in space—not, in fact, for years. Before dressing she rescued the little notebook, put it in a different pocket.

  “Pig!” He may have had a moment’s worry that he’d killed her. “Get that food.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Quite insane now, she smiled—a doubly horrible effect on her bloodied face—and went to do as he ordered, smoothly, efficiently as always. Don was awake too, by now, looking curiously at her. She offered no explanation, merely inquired what he’d like to eat.

  The dinner she produced was particularly tasty; she used some of her carefully hoarded spices to disguise any possible taste from another carefully hoarded ingredient—though she knew from long-ago paramed school it was tasteless.

  The fact that she was crazy was made clear by her choice. She had other capabilities; she could have served a meal from which neither Don nor the captain would ever have wakened. In fact, she did give one such to Don, who had always been minimally decent to her. But for the captain she had another, and as it turned out, more perilous plan. Cold Pig was human; she wanted him to know.

  He ate heartily. Another type of person might have been made slightly suspicious by the niceness, comprising just the foods she knew he was fondest of. Or by her compliant, quietly agreeable manner. To Bob Meich it only confirmed what his father had taught him, that all women needed was a little knocking about, to be shown who was boss. He announced thickly something to this effect to Don, on his bunk in the next “room”; expecting no answer and getting none.

  Don was young, the captain mused. Too soft. He still talked about his mother. When Don got better he would teach him a thing or two about handling women.

  Presently he began to slump toward the special dessert CP served him. Feeling some irony, she put his “nightcap” bottle where he liked it, within easy reach. She was impatient now, there was much to do. Waiting, she had to admire his extraordinary physical vitality. A dose that ought to have brought quick oblivion took a few minutes to work fully on him. She began to worry that he might hear Don begin to hyperventilate, but he gave no sign of this. Finally Meich s
tared about, focused on her, shouted “Wha—?” and half rose before he went down for good. She should have been warned.

  But he was completely unconscious—she snapped her fingers by his ear, sprinkled salt on his exposed eye to make sure. She could get to work.

  First she wanted to check on Don. She had saved enough of the substance she had fed him to serve her own necessities, and she wanted to see how painful it might be.

  Don was half off his bunk, the last spasms subsiding into occasional leg jerks. His face was not excessively distorted, only sweat-covered, and the mouth was bloody. He’d bitten almost through his tongue, she found. But it did seem to have been quick. There was no heartbeat now except for one last faint thud that came during the minute she listened. Despite herself, she wiped his face a little, closed his eyes, and laid a hand for an instant on his soft brown hair. He had been considerate once.

  Then she went to work, hard and fast. She blunted one scalpel and another—those suits and air tubes were tough—and had to go to pliers and other tools before she had things to her satisfaction. Next she got all essentials tied or taped in place. She also disconnected a few alarms to keep bedlam from breaking out prematurely. Early in the process, Meich startled her by sliding out of his chair, ending head down under the table.

  One of the air canisters she’d wrestled loose rolled under the table too, the cut end of its hose wagging. This she noticed only subliminally, it didn’t seem to matter. She was busy undogging heavy seals.

  The main air-pressure alarm in the pilot’s chamber was very loud. It roused Bob Meich.

  He rolled convulsively, and pushed himself half upright, overturning table and seats, opening, closing, opening his eyes wide with obvious effort.

  What he saw would probably have stunned a lesser man to fatal hesitancy. The room was in a gale—papers, clothes, objects of all description were flying past him, snapping out of the half-open main port.

  The port was opening farther. As he looked, the suited, helmeted figure of Cold Pig pulled the great circular port seal back to its widest extent and calmly latched it. Alarms were howling and warbling all over the ship as air left from everywhere at once and pressure dropped; total uproar. Then the sounds faded as the air to carry them went out. The last to remain audible was a far faint squeal from the interior of Don’s scouter. Then near silence.

  CP had wondered whether Meich would go first for his suit or directly to the door and herself.

  His reflexes carried him, already gasping in airlessness, to the suit that hung on the wall behind, standing straight out as it tugged to fly. One heavy boot had already rolled and shot out the port—no matter, the helmet was there. Emergency suits were emplaced throughout Calgary, which was partly what had taken her so long.

  He was halfway into it, staggered against the wall, when he saw the cuts. He grunted—or perhaps shouted, the air was now too thin to carry sound—and fell to his knees clasping the helmet. But he couldn’t or didn’t put it on—his dying eyes were still sharp enough to catch the neatly sliced air hoses. The helmet couldn’t help him, it was now connected to nothing.

  His mouth opening and closing, perhaps yelling curses, he toppled to the floor, taking great strangled gulps of nearvacuum. Finally he rolled again beneath the table. His last gesture was to grab the bolted-down table leg with one strong pink hand, to fight the pull that would carry him out the port. He held there through the last spasm CP decided was death. She couldn’t see him fully, she wanted neither to touch him nor to peer, but he was totally moveless. Man cannot live without air. Not even a Meich, she told herself.

  In her savage heart she was a shade disappointed that he had not put on the useless helmet. Further, she would have been better pleased never to have to see that face.

  The gale was subsiding, the pull from the port was almost gone. CP waited impatiently until the VACUUM light flashed on the console; it was time to get to work. Don should go first.

  Outside the port was a rushing, flickering grayness—the star fields flashing by as Calgary rolled. Only ahead and astern was there relatively stable vision. Ahead lay steadier stars, she knew—she dared not, of course, lean out to look—while behind lay the great dim starlit disk of Uranus, flame-edged on one limb. They were orbiting in outward-facing attitude, to maximize the chance of observing any events on the planet. By chance—she hadn’t had endurance enough to plan—Calgary was just coming into that arc of her orbit where the sun and the world of men were almost directly in line beyond the planet.

  Good. She hooked a safety web across the open port, and walked, cautious of any remaining air pockets, into the chamber where Don lay.

  She had prepared jato units to send the corpses as fast as possible down out of orbit and falling into Uranus. There would of course be no science-fiction nonsense about macabre objects orbiting Calgary; certainly not after she was on her way out and away forever—how she longed to start!—but more practically, she wanted no accidental discovery of the corpses. It would be, of course, a million-to-one freak. But freaks happen. CP knew that. In Calgary’s attitude, the temptation to set the jets directly at Uranus was strong, but she must arrange them to decelerate instead; most efficient.

  She was figuring out the settings as she bent over Don. The hypo she had prepared in case Meich went for her was still clenched, almost hidden, in one glove. She must put it down somewhere safe.

  As she reached toward a locker her body was touched from behind.

  Terror. What—

  An arm clamped hard around her neck.

  As it passed her faceplate she had a glimpse of muscles and unmistakably pink, hairless skin.

  A dead man had come after her. Meich had come back from death to kill her—was killing her now.

  It would indeed have been Meich’s impulse and delight to maul and kill her with his bare hands. But he was impeded. One hand was pressing the cut end of an air-tank hose to his mouth. And it is not easy in vacuum to batter a body in a pressure suit, nor to choke a neck enclosed in a hard helmet base. So he was contenting himself with yanking out her air hoses first, intending to get at her when she weakened, and keep her alive long enough to fully feel his wrath.

  His first great jerk almost sent her reeling, but he had a leg hard about hers, holding her close.

  Cold Pig, aghast to the bones, didn’t keep her head. Adrenaline rush almost stopped her heart.

  All was gone from her save only reflexes. The hand holding the hypo came round in one drive of horror-heightened power and precision—the needle he hadn’t seen was there went straight in, against all likelihood not bending, not breaking, not striking plastic or bone, right through the suit he had pulled up, through liner, skin, and visceral sheath, while CP’s clumsy gloved fingers found the triggers and her terrified muscles exerted impossible strength. The discharge shot directly into liver and stomach and ran out lodged in the lining of his renal vein. The strike was so clean Meich may never have felt it. He didn’t know he was now truly a dead man. Or would be in seconds.

  And seconds counted.

  He had torn her air tubes loose, she was without air save only for the tiny amount lodged in her helmet and suit. And he was clamped to her, arm and leg. She began to choke, partly from sheer panic, as she twisted in his dying grasp, not understanding at first what was happening. The force of her turning blow had carried her partway round; she contorted frantically, and finally saw the air tank he was holding and the hose end he breathed from.

  It took precious instants for her to understand that she must open her faceplate and get that air hose to her mouth.

  Somehow, in spite of his mad battering and wrenching, she opened up. Dying girl fought with dead man for the hose end. She could not possibly pry loose his fingers, though she broke one. But the lethal drug was telling on him—she finally butted his head aside with her helmeted one, and managed to gulp air hissing from the hose he held.

  In one last spasm of hate he tried to fling the air tank away from them both.
But the tank struck her body. She held on.

  And then it was over, really over at last. Meich lay slumped grotesquely at her feet, against Don’s bunk.

  It took infinite time for her to stop shaking. She vomited twice, fouling herself, but since the hose end was free she didn’t aspirate it. She watched, watched, for any motion or, breath from the twice-dead man. Only the fear that the wildly escaping air—so precious—would give out, finally got her moving rationally.

  It was almost more than her fingers could do to reconnect her hoses, fit a spare for the damaged one, wipe out and close her faceplate. She would have to live and work for a time in her own vomit, which she found appropriate.

  And there was much work to do, in vacuum, before she could reseal Calgary. It was now getting very cold.

  She had a message to send, and she wanted to dump everything of the men’s before repressurizing, to use the waste flush later as little as possible. The bodies she would send out first, right now.

  This time there was no question of Don preceding; she laid shuddering hands on Meich’s legs and dragged him to the port and the jato rig. She managed to stop herself from leaning out to make sure he had jetted clean away, not caught on some part of Calgary to clamber back at her. But she did permit herself to go to the stern port and watch his jet dwindle among the whirling stars.

  Then Don. Then everything she could lay hands on or dump from lockers, even to letters, private caches, the pinups on walls, even the duty roster. All, all went out, and did orbit Calgary, but only for a time.

  Finally she unlatched and wrestled shut the cold main port.

  Then without waiting to repressurize, she was free to yield to heart’s desire. She didn’t even bother to sit down, she simply ran through the basic emergency ignition sequence—Calgary was already in perfect attitude—and slammed the main thrust over and on.

  Softly, with slowly growing, inexorable power, Calgary departed orbit and headed at maximum acceleration away from Uranus, away from Sol behind it, away from humanity, outward toward empty space and the unreachable stars.